I'm in the process of creating an application which will rely on up to five Winsock servers existing on the intranet.

The .Connect function, under TCP, left me with a problem when the client tries to connect and the server's not started, (.State=6). This will be in a fast-paced environment, and I don't want the program spending inordinate amounts of time waiting for the connection to succeed - especially when the target server isn't on-line.

After some research on here, I figure the easiest solution is to have the client transmit a "where-the-heck-are-ya" UDP message, but that leaves me with even more questions:

- With multiple servers available, it seems I'd need to be more specific on the "where are you" message, along the lines of "admin server|where are you"? Or would it be better to have each server monitor a different port for the UDP request?

- Can a server monitor multiple ports under different protocols at the same time, (e.g. port 1007 TCP, and port 1008 UDP)?

So far I've written it to use the TCP protocol, but I've seen mentions that UDP is more efficient. Since the servers won't send responses back to the clients, I'm guessing that may be true. But, that's just guessing, for me.

Any guidance you gurus want to share will be more than welcome.