Listen for ICMP packets in C#

Question

I have a SIP application that needs to send UDP packets to set up the SIP calls. SIP has a timeout mechanism to cope with delivery failures. An additional thing I would like

Answer 1

I am writing this as a separate answer, since the details are completely different from the one I wrote earlier.

So based on the comment from Kalmi about the session ID, it got me to thinking about why I can open up two ping programs on the same machine, and the responses don't cross over. They are both ICMP, therefore both using port-less raw sockets. That means something in the IP stack, has to know what socket those responses were intended for. For ping it turns out there is an ID used in the data of the ICMP package as part of ECHO REQUEST and ECHO REPLY.

Then I ran across this comment on wikipedia about ICMP:

Although ICMP messages are contained within standard IP datagrams, ICMP messages are usually processed as a special case, distinguished from normal IP processing, rather than processed as a normal sub-protocol of IP. In many cases, it is necessary to inspect the contents of the ICMP message and deliver the appropriate error message to the application that generated the original IP packet, the one that prompted the sending of the ICMP message.

Which was elaborated on (indirectly) here:

The internet header plus the first 64 bits of the original datagram's data. This data is used by the host to match the message to the appropriate process. If a higher level protocol uses port numbers, they are assumed to be in the first 64 data bits of the original datagram's data.

Since you are using UDP, which uses ports, it is possible the network stack is routing the ICMP message back to the original socket. This is why your new, and separate, socket is never receiving those messages. I imagine UDP eats the ICMP message.

If I am correct, one solution to this is to open a raw socket and manually create your UDP packets, listen for the anything coming back, and handle UDP and ICMP messages as appropriate. I am not sure what that would look like in code, but I don't imagine it would be too difficult, and may be considered more "elegant" than the winpcap solution.

Additionally this link, http://www.networksorcery.com/enp/default1003.htm, appears to be a great resource for low level network protocols.

I hope this helps.