TCP/IP connection on a specific interface

Question

I\'d like to connect to a server using one of two network routes. How would one do this? I\'ve Googled quite a bit, and the common answer is to fiddle with the routing table

Answer 1

Use the bind() function to bind the socket to either 192.168.1.3 or 192.168.1.2 before calling connect(), ConnectEx(), or WSAConnect(). That tells the socket which specific interface to use for the outgoing connection. For example:

SOCKET s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);

sockaddr_in localaddr = {0};
localaddr.sin_family = AF_INET;
localaddr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.1.3");
bind(s, (sockaddr*)&localaddr, sizeof(localaddr));

sockaddr_in remoteaddr = {0};
remoteaddr.sin_family = AF_INET;
remoteaddr.sin_addr.s_addr = inet_addr("192.168.1.4");
remoteaddr.sin_port = 12345; // whatever the server is listening on
connect(s, (sockaddr*)&remoteaddr, sizeof(remoteaddr));

Alternatively:

addrinfo localhints = {0};
localhints.ai_flags = AI_NUMERICHOST | AI_NUMERICSERV;
localhints.ai_family = AF_INET;
localhints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
localhints.ai_protocol = IPPROTO_TCP;

addrinfo *localaddr = NULL;
getaddrinfo("192.168.1.3", "0", &localhints, &localaddr);
bind(s, localaddr->ai_addr, localaddr->ai_addrlen);
freeaddrinfo(localaddr);

addrinfo remotehints = {0};
remotehints.ai_flags = AI_NUMERICHOST | AI_NUMERICSERV;
remotehints.ai_family = AF_INET;
remotehints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM;
remotehints.ai_protocol = IPPROTO_TCP;

addrinfo *remoteaddr = NULL;
getaddrinfo("192.168.1.4", "12345", &remotehints, &remoteaddr);
connect(s, remoteaddr->ai_addr, remoteaddr->ai_addrlen);
freeaddrinfo(remoteaddr);