Hi,

At January 18, 2004, 12:54, shaq@... wrote:

> I was wondering if there was a way to find all available firebird
> servers on a network. For example like PcAnywhere will give you a
> list of available hosts to connect with.

> Is there a way this can be done with firebird?

There is a way that will work most of the time.

Here are the steps:

1. Get the list of all the computers currently connected on the
network.

2. Try to connect to each of these computers as if they have Firebird
running. And if the connection can be established, then there is an
Interbase or Firebird server running on that computer.

The trick here is assuming that all the Firebird servers are
configured with the same TCP/IP port. Otherwise, you'll to test all
known possible ports being used on the different computers. If it
would not be known what the port would be, then this process can be a
lengthy one, since you would have to test each of the computer's
ports, until you find one that connects to Firebird. And, that could
well over 65000 ports to test per computer.

I'm sure that there are other ways that can be thought of.

Here's another example:
Having an application, that would accept TCP/IP enquiries, running on
the same computer as Firebird, and that you would be scanning the
computers for that application. Also, this small application could
return which port to use when connecting to Firebird.

--
Best regards,
Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)