https://github.com/bastidood/udp-multicast-chat
A simple chat room over UDP multicast written in Rust.
https://github.com/bastidood/udp-multicast-chat
cli rust udp
Last synced: 9 months ago
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A simple chat room over UDP multicast written in Rust.
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/bastidood/udp-multicast-chat
- Owner: BastiDood
- Created: 2022-07-03T10:08:05.000Z (about 4 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2024-05-05T09:52:44.000Z (about 2 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-09-09T13:58:03.401Z (10 months ago)
- Topics: cli, rust, udp
- Language: Rust
- Homepage:
- Size: 167 KB
- Stars: 7
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 1
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# UDP Multicast Chat Room
UDP multicast provides a mechanism for one-to-many communication in a network. Unlike broadcasting, a multicast may only be received by those subscribed to the particular multicast address of interest. This application implements a basic chat room multicast over a local area network.
> [!CAUTION]
> All messages in the chat room are sent over _unencrypted_ UDP multicast channels.
# Architecture
For the user interface, this project uses the [egui] framework. In the back-end, the [Tokio] runtime powers all asynchronous workloads: networking, synchronization, and task scheduling.
The main thread runs the user interface logic. On a separate networking thread, the [Tokio] runtime handles incoming and outgoing messages. Information is passed between the two threads via [channels](https://docs.rs/tokio/latest/tokio/sync/index.html).
[egui]: https://www.egui.rs
[Tokio]: https://tokio.rs
On startup, the network back-end initializes a socket that binds to `0.0.0.0:3000`. The socket then joins the multicast address `224.0.0.69:3000`. To prevent multiple instances of the application to bind to the same address (on the same device), the [`SO_REUSEADDR`](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/network/so-reuseaddr) flag is disabled. All of these values may be tweaked via the command-line interface.
```
Usage: udp-multicast-chat [-a ] [-p ] [--reuse]
Networking options.
Options:
-a, --addr multicast address that the socket must join
-p, --port specific port to bind the socket to
--reuse whether or not to allow the UDP socket to be reused by
another application
--help display usage information
```
To run the server
```bash
# Bind to `0.0.0.0:3000`, then join the multicast address
# `224.0.0.69:3000`, and launch the user interface.
cargo run --release -- --addr 224.0.0.69 --port 3000
```