Ignore bind address for (receive) sockets

For multicast sockets, bind address defines the NIC which will be used to receive and send IP multicast packets. For unicast sockets (e.g. ServerSocket), this is an unnecessary restriction and bind address should be ignored. For example, if we define bind_addr=1.2.3.4, then we will be able to only receive packets on 1.2.3.4, but not 5.6.7.8 etc.
However, currently bind_addr is used to define the identity of a member, so we still need to use it (although not set it in a socket). This will be easier once we have logical addresses.

Email by Satya:
Hi,

I have found an issue which is to be fixed in 2.5. I
want to know if my issue is realted to this issue.

The description is as follows:

If -Dbind.address or bind_addr are not set, JGroups
picks the NIC to bind sockets to itself. However,
especially for ServerSockets, this may not be
desirable because we may want to have ServerSockets be
able to receive packets through all interfaces, e.g.

• NICs are 192.168.5.2, 192.168.0.2 and 127.0.0.1
  (loopback)
• When the bind address is set to 192.168.5.2, a given
  ServerSocket on port 7500 will *only accept packets
  from this NIC*
• If someone connects to 192.168.0.2:7500 or
  127.0.0.1:7500, the client will not be able to
  establish a connection because nobody is listening on
  those ports on the given NICs
• If bind address was not set, this would be possible
• Affected: FD_SOCK, FD_PING, TCP, TCP_NIO etc
• We need to think about semantics for
  MulticastSockets where a wildcard address (not setting
  the bind address) means that the operating system
  picks the NIC, and not that the MulticastSocket will
  listen on all interfaces for incoming packets

Regards,
Satya.

— satya narayana <satya_461@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Hi Bela,
> >
> > It worked for me as long as I was stopping the NIC's
> > which GMS address doesn't correspond.
> >
> > When I stopped the NIC which has the GMS Address
> > specified by the member, I see them not
> > communicating.
> >
> > If u have tried this and working for you , can you
> > tell me the properties and options which u have
> > specified to your demo ?