Develop Reference

"localhost" vs 127.0.0.1 java

Java is giving 127.0.0.1 as IP for InetAddress.getByName("localhost").getHostAddress()
But why java not gives "localhost" for InetAddress.getByName("127.0.0.1").getHostName. For later one I get "127.0.0.1" as host name. Please clarify this.

The javadoc of InetAddress.getByName(String) states
The host name can either be a machine name, such as "java.sun.com", or
a textual representation of its IP address. If a literal IP address is
supplied, only the validity of the address format is checked.
So it doesn't actually go to your hosts file (or DNS) for an IP address. It just creates a InetAddress object with both hostname and address created from the String you provided.
For your first example
InetAddress.getByName("localhost").getHostAddress()
Assuming you have a hosts file entry like
127.0.0.1 localhost
then the InetAddress object returned will have that information, ie. a hostname of localhost and an address of 127.0.0.1.
Similarly, if you had
1.2.3.4 this.is.a.name
and
InetAddress localhost = InetAddress.getByName("this.is.a.name");
The returned InetAddress would be constructed with a hostname of this.is.a.name and an address of 1.2.3.4, because it actually went and checked.

Java. InetAddress.getLocalHost returns strange IP

I'm don't understand, why code below prints 0.0.9.229 instead 127.0.0.1. Can anybody tell me, hot to fix that?
String ha = InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostAddress();
System.out.println(ha);
UPD:
Code running on Ubuntu
/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 2533

InetAddress.getLocalHost() doesn't do what most people think that it does. It actually returns the hostname of the machine, and the IP address associated with that hostname. This may be the address used to connect to the outside world. It may not. It just depends on how you have your system configured.
On my windowsbox it gets the machine name and the external ip address. On my linux box it returns hostname and 127.0.0.1 because I have it set so in /etc/hosts

The problem is that my hostname will consists only of numbers and could not be resolved.
I change my /etc/hostname with characters at first position and problem has solved.

Use NetworkInterface to enumerate network interfaces; InetAddress.getLocalHost() always returns loopback.If you want to get all IP's associated with your machine use NetworkInterface then you will get 127.0.0.1 also.
Enumeration<NetworkInterface> nInterfaces = NetworkInterface.getNetworkInterfaces();
while (nInterfaces.hasMoreElements()) {
Enumeration<InetAddress> inetAddresses = nInterfaces.nextElement().getInetAddresses();
while (inetAddresses.hasMoreElements()) {
String address = inetAddresses.nextElement().getHostAddress();
System.out.println(address);
}
}

How to establish connections to a ServerSocket from internet?

My ServerSocket listens to LAN Connections and accepts them well, but when I try to connect to the same through my Phone - using the 3G connection - it doesn't seem to connect.
I tried using getMyIP site to get the IP and try to connect to it, it does get the right IP (checked with my router) but then no connections are accepted at all.
I tried opening the port on windows 7 and on my router altogether.
I put those lines in my Server constructor:
ss = new ServerSocket(port);
host=ss.getInetAddress().getHostAddress();
and I get the ip on host to 0.0.0.0
Thanks for your help.

- While you are at LAN, you can use the Private IP as well as Public IP ranges
- But when you are using the Internet to access the Server which is at your place, then you need to have a static Public IP address.
- You can ask for a static Public IP address from your ISP at some extra cost, there are also some site over net that some how provides a static IP on the basis of your Dynamic IP.
Private IP ranges Can't be used over the Internet.
Class A - 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255
Class B - 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255
Class C - 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255

You need to have a public IP address. If you have a router it must pass traffic for the port you want to expose to the internet to your machine. If you have a firewall, it must allow external connections to this port.
All the changes you do are the same regardless of language you use and there is nothing you can do from Java to work around needing to do these things.

Check your firewall if it allows incoming connection. You need to make and exception there.
you need to bind explicitly the IP address on your machine which is allocated for that instance of time by your ISP.
You can get the IP address allocated to you by running ipconfig command on windows command prompt.
Use the following code to bind to a specific IP address
InetSocketAddress insa = new InetSocketAddress("22.23.23.111", 9090);
ServerSocket ss = new ServerSocket();
ss.bind(insa);
String host=ss.getInetAddress().getHostAddress();
System.out.println(host);
This prints the IP address allocated to you.

Remotely connecting two non-local computers with sockets

This question seems like something very obvious to ask, and yet I spent more than an hour trying to find an answer.
First I host and wait for someone to connect. Then, from another instance of the application, I try to connect with a socket - for the constructor, I use InetAddress, port. The port is always right, and everything works if I use "localhost" for the address. However, if I type my IP (the one I got from Googling "what is my ip"), I get an IOException. I even sent the application to someone else, gave him my IP, and it didn't work.
The aim of the application is to connect two computers. It's in Java. Here is the relevant code.
Server:
ServerSocket serverSocket = new ServerSocket(port);
Socket clientSocket = serverSocket.accept();
Client:
InetAddress a = InetAddress.getByName(ip);
Socket s = new Socket(a, port);
I don't get past that. Obviously, the values of int port and String ip are taken from text fields.
Edit: the purpose of my application is to connect two non-local computers.

As mentionned by Greg Hewgill, if you are behind a NAT Device (Router, etc...) you will have to do some Port Forwarding.
Basically, your public IP Address that you get from using "What is my IP" from google is your public IP Address, but since you are using a router with multiple computers connected to it, there is a protocol that maps multiple computers to a single public address called NAT.
What you'll need to do is tell your router to forward the incoming packets on a certain port to a certain computer.
The way to do this is highlighted in this article http://www.wikihow.com/Port-Forward

Java Socket on Different Machine Does Not Work

I've tried many examples on web and one of them is this:
http://zerioh.tripod.com/ressources/sockets.html
All of the server-client socket examples work fine when they are tested with 127.0.0.1
BUT it never ever EVAR works on two different computers with actual raw real IP address ("could not connect to host" on telnet and "connection timed out" when tested on java client - the server program just waits for connection)
Note:
Firewall is turned off for sure
IP address from ipconfig didn't work
IP address from myipaddress.com (which is totally different for no reason than that from ipconfig) didn't work
What is it that I'm missing?
If I can only figure this out...

Try binding on 0.0.0.0. This tells your socket to accept connections on every IP your local can accept upon.

Based on the comment where the the following snippet of code is mentioned:
requestSocket = new Socket("10.0.0.5", 2004); // ip from ipconfig
it would be better to use the hostname instead of the IP address in the constructor, as the two-parameter Socket constructor with a String argument expects the hostname as the String, and not an IP address. A lookup of the IP address is then performed on the provided hostname.
If you need to pass in an IP address, use the two-parameter constructor that accepts the InetAddress as an argument. You can then provide a raw IP address to the InetAddress.getByAddress method, as shown in the following snippet:
InetAddress addr = InetAddress.getByAddress(new byte[]{10,0,0,5});
You'll need to be careful when specifying arguments via the byte array, as bytes are signed in Java (-127 through +128), and numbers beyond this range (but valid octets of IP addresses) may have to be specified using Integer.byteValue.
Finally, it should be noted that it is important to specify the IP address of the remote machine, as visible to the client. The IP address listed at myipaddress.com may be the address of a proxy, as that is the public IP of your entire network as visible to the host server at myipaddress.com. Therefore, you ought to be specify the IP address of the remote machine that is visible to your machine and not myipaddress.com.