Multicast on Android 2.2

Question

Has anyone gotten Multicast to work on Android 2.2, specifically JmDNS for Bonjour service detection. There are many questions & answers from the Android 1.5->2.0 timef

Answer 1

To (rudely) answer my own question, more information was provided at http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2917#c48 by another person. For posterity, as they say, here is brian.ro...@gmail.com's answer...

"I've spent quite a bit of time debugging mDNS issues with JmDNS on my Evo and HTC Hero (CDMA). What I found is there appears to be a filter in place in the broadcom wireless driver on the Evo (and since I'm getting a similiar reprt from an HTC Desire user - with the same chipset, presumably that handset as well). The filter, by default, blocks any non-unicast or network broadcast traffic, including multicast. Apparently the theory was it's a battery saver.

The problem appears to be the wpa_supplicant on the Evo does not support removing those filters when you get a MulticastLock. (Check the log output right after you get the lock and you'll see what I mean). Unfortunately what has happened is the hardware vendors have fragmented multicast support.... :("

So... it appears this is a device problem more than a coding problem. D'oh. :( If I get an opportunity to test on another device...