Develop Reference

Local network ARP requests from Android app

I'm working on an app interacting with Network Enabled devices on a local network.
I'm currently working with IP addresses. However, on the long run, IP addresses will eventually change, breaking the connection. I'd like to store MAC addresses instead, and init my app by sending ARP requests and fetching the matching IP address for each stored MAC.
Is this the correct way to do this?
If so, which library should I use for such a task, and do any of you have a code example?
Many thanks!

You will probably need to access low-level components which Android & Java don't allow you to. Maybe with a rooted device ?

Change WiFi-Direct IP range? Force IPv6 in Android WiFi-Direct?

I have two Android KitKat phones, both are running WiFi-Direct groups as Group Owners, let's call them GO1 and GO2
I managed to connect GO1 as a legacy client to GO2 without breaking any of the (previously set) wifi-direct groups.
The problem is that, as you might know, the GO IP address is hardcoded in Android source, and is set to 192.168.49.1
Therefore, both of my devices, GO1 and GO2 have the same IP address (**)... each on his local network.
My app is both client and server at the same time. But both networks are using the same IP range (192.168.49.XXX), which, apparently, I cannot change.
As a result I cannot create a TCP connection between them if they are both hosting a WiFi-Direct Group, since any device will connect to itself when trying to connect to 192.168.49.1
So the questions are:
Is there a way to change the IP range used in Wifi-Direct?
Is there a way to use IPv6 instead of IPv4 in Wifi-Direct?
Can any of this be done without rooting the phone?
Any other suggestion?
** : Actually, because GO1 is connecting as a legacy client to GO2, then GO1 is known as 192.168.49.227 (for example) to GO2 and GO2 is known as 192.168.49.1 to GO1. But because GO1 is ALSO a GO, it also known as 192.168.49.1 to his clients (and itself).

A way to get around this without rooting the phone is to send your packets via multicast UDP*. These packets will make it from GO1 to GO2.
There are some side effects to this:
To use this for networking you must perform encapsulation and routing at the OSI Application level (not efficient).
You will also need to route based on MAC addresses since every device has the same 192.168.49.1 address.
"It is important to note that the multicast socket encapsulates a one-to-many unicast communication and, as a result of this, cannot fully utilize the total available WiFi and WiFi Direct bandwidth" *
Something else worth noting:
As you scale up the number of GOs, you will run into a problem of all nodes operating on the same wifi channel. This isn't a problem with a few devices, but with hundreds of devices, it will be a huge problem.
*This method was mentioned in Colin Funai, Cristiano Tapparello, and Wendi Heinzelman paper titled "Supporting Multi-hop Device-to-Device Networks Through WiFi Direct Multi-group Networking" found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1601.00028.pdf

There is no way to change the IP range because as you have correctly pointed out, it is hardcoded in the Android Wi-Fi Direct system service. Personally, I am not aware of IPv6 being enabled on the Wi-Fi P2P interface, and even if it was, it would likely be a hardcoded IPv6 address.
If GO1 and GO2, must be connected to each other whilst both in GO mode, then perhaps look at using Bluetooth or some other transport to allow them to communicate. If communication between GO1 and GO2 can be delayed, then cache whatever information is to be exchanged, and send it between these two devices when one can be the client of the other, e.g. when GO1 can stop being a GO and can be a client of GO2.

Socket programming WiFi issue

I am implementing a mobile chat application, I am using socket connection for implementing p2p connectivity. My chat is working fine with android devices. My issue is I can connect a device in 3g network or with in the same WiFi network but the connection is not working when a device form outside WiFi try to connect a device in the WiFi network. I know it's because of the local IP of the device assigned by the WiFi. How can I root and connect a device in the WiFi?

Sounds more like a router settings issue, than an app issue (meaning that users of your app would need to do this for their own networks as well).
Your wifi router needs to know how to forward communication to your device. So say that your app is connecting on port 1234, then you need to tell your router to forward communication from the outside on port 1234 to the internal IP of your phone in your wifi network.
The phone that is outside of the network should target your network's external IP and port 1234.

Sajan, your issue is not only an IP mapping issue, but also a NAT traversal issue. It is not always possible to punch holes in NATs. And when it is, it must be done with some sophisticated techniques including a super peer located outside of your wifi/lan which will read the translated address from your inside peer.
Unless you are using UDP and the NAT is friendly, it is not possible to send TCP communication directly to the inside peer. In most case, you'll have to check what is possible with the NAT, and if there is something possible, you'll need to perform mapping prediction and tell both peer to attempt com on predicted IP addresses.
That's valid if you don't want you users to have to configure their NATs. And even in that case, such configuration will not always be enough (if there are cascades of NATs, or proxies for example).

How to communicate without prior knowledge of IP

Im developing an app which uses the tcp connection. currently im communicating using hard coded IP addresses as a sample, but in the real world this is not the case i think. We come across any mobile and start communicating/sharing etc without having any prior knowledge of other person's IP. In such a case how to get the IP address of those who are using my application. How can i communicate without the prior knowledge of the IP address. How to implement this. Help me in sorting it. Thanks in advance.
EDIT:
And in case if the user connects the internet thro' GPRS/3G connection then his IP address will be changing based on the service provider. How can i find that.

Given what you are commenting on other answers, if what you want are the IP addresses of other Android devices to do some kind of P2P game you should note that there is no reliable way to do that directly.
If the users are connected in the same LAN you could provide in your application some kind of discovery service using UDP broadcasts.
If the users are connected to the internet and have public IP addresses then you could use some intermediate server to register the users at startup and have them discover other users using that server.
But (and this is the most common case) if the users are connected to the Internet and have private IP addresses (like when they are connected with WIFI on their LAN) you need some kind of server that acts as a proxy for their requests because there is no way to make a direct TCP connection from a natted IP to another natted IP. There are a few solutions to solve this problem, you could start for example by learning something about XMPP and how it works.

Your app must use DNS. You will first need get your IP into the DNS system. You do this by signing up for a domain name & setting up A / AAAA records for hostnames with a hosting provider (or you could set up your own DNS server). You may even find some free DNS providers.
In your app, you can hard-code a fully qualified domain name that you previously set up, say - app.foo.com and use the android gethostbyname library call to fetch the IP address for you. The local DNS resolver will then go to its DNS server and fetch the IP address corresponding to app.foo.com.

Can you use DNS? You can still hard-code the domain name if you want, and the domain name can be configured to point to any IP addresses anytime later.

Does Wifi access points have an ip address?

I am trying to make an application which can connect from a mobile to a wifi controller. Planning to do a socket connection(multicast) ... The only values that i am able to get through the wifi android apis are SSID and BSSID.. Can anyone tell me if i am supposed to proceed with these values or am i supposed to connect with an IP address ? If i am supposed to connect with BSSID.. how do i go about it?

Wifi access points need not have an IP address, any more than wired switches and hubs do. However a large number do, as they also act on the IP layer as DHCP servers and network gateways.
What exactly are you trying to do? It sounds likely that it is not the Wifi access point proper that you need to talk to.
If it supports TCP and UDP, it will of course have an IP address. This will not be directly discoverable from the Wifi APIs, and you'll need some other means of discovering that. It's hard to say what exactly will be a reasonable method to do this without knowing what the AP is, and what services it provides.
Common ways of enumerating services provided on a network include DHCP; multicast DNS/DNS service discovery which is used by "Bonjour" and "Zeroconf"), SSDP and uPnP, and of course static configuration.
I'm not familiar enough with the Android network APIs to recommend anything, though http://jmdns.sourceforge.net/ appears to be a usable Java multicast DNS library.