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JoeHz avatar image
JoeHz asked

Multicast on Kindle Fire

I'm working on a client app for the Kindle Fire that will communicate with a Windows based server running on the same wifi.

I'm rolling my own service location by having the server do a multicast broadcast of its address. I'm having the damndest time getting the Kindle Fire to receive the UDP Multicast though.

Then I found THIS

So now I have the following questions.

1) Does this problem impact Kindle Fire devices?

2) If so, what would be the work around? Is there a Service Discovery Protocol that exists on the Fire and in the Windows universe? (SSDP, for example...). I thought using such a thing would be overkill, but maybe not now...

fire tabletandroidjava
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Levon@Amazon avatar image Levon@Amazon ♦ commented ·

Hi JoeHz,

I forwarded your query to the Fire OS team. Thanks!

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2 Answers

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JoeHz answered

The solution to my problem was ZeroConf. ZeroConf is sufficiently interoperable with Android's Network Service Discovery API.

On the Windows Server side, this meant using Bonjour (Apple's implementation of ZeroConf) and using Mono.ZeroConf. It also meant recompiling the Mono.Zeroconf project because the binaries that are with the project right now silently fail.

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Levon@Amazon avatar image Levon@Amazon ♦ commented ·

Hi JoeHz,

It's good to hear you found a solution, and thanks for sharing!

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Levon@Amazon answered

Hi JoeHz,

Can you please clarify:

  1. Describe the network being used for testing (e.g. are you trying to use ILAW?)
  2. Model(s) of Access Point tested to find the problem
  3. Does your network support IGMP? It is a sort of Enterprise feature, and we would not expect consumer APs to support this feature. Seems like the link does not include this.
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JoeHz avatar image JoeHz commented ·

1) I'm trying to use a plain ordinary wifi IPv4 network with DHCP provided IP addresses. Presumably the server and app will know nothing about their surroundings other than making these assumptions. 2 and 3) I don't think the network is the issue. I'm simply asking if the linux underlying the FireOS was compiled with IGMP enabled and if not, what is the recommended method of an app locating a service provided elsewhere on the LAN? I'm mucking about with ZeroConf/Bonjour as it is right now to solve this problem, but I'd appreciate it if you could point me into a supported method of doing this as it should be a well-"traveled road" and a multicast broadcast seems made for it.

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