Received UDP packet length

Question

How to get the length of received UDP packet? Using wireshark I could see the correct length of datagram. How can I print this value in my simple udp server program? I am receiving binary data (Non printable ascii characters as a data) So I can not use strlen(buf) which throws incorrect length.

      if (ret=recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (struct sockaddr *)&si_other, &slen)==-1){
            error = ioctl(s, FIONREAD, &value);
            printf(" from ioctl UDP packet length is : %d error is : %d\n", value, error);
      }

udp packet length is always '0' from the above code. Any comments?

I also tried like below

         if (ret=recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (struct sockaddr *)&si_other, &slen)!=-1){
            unsigned short iphdrlen;
            struct iphdr* iph = (struct iphdr*)buf;
            iphdrlen =iph->ihl*4;

            printf("IP version :%d\n", ((unsigned int)((iph->version))));
            printf("protocol .. %d\n", ((unsigned int)(iph->protocol)));
            printf("total len .. %d\n", (ntohs(iph->tot_len)));
         }

The above code always returns me wrong values from ip header? Any comments?

The original C file is included here.

#include "udp_common.h"

int main(void)
{
        struct sockaddr_in si_me, si_other;
        int s, i, slen=sizeof(si_other);
        unsigned char buf[BUFLEN];
        int noofbytes=0;
        int ret=0,error,value;

        memset(buf, 0, 512);
        if ((s=socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_UDP))==-1)
                diep("socket");

        memset((char *) &si_me, 0, sizeof(si_me));
        si_me.sin_family = AF_INET;
        si_me.sin_port = htons(PORT);
        si_me.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);
        if (bind(s, (struct sockaddr *)&si_me, sizeof(si_me))==-1)
                diep("bind");

        for (i=0; ; i++)
        //for (i=0; i<NPACK ; i++) 
        {
                if (ret=recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (struct sockaddr *)&si_other, &slen)==-1)
                diep("recvfrom()");
                printf(" source port is : %d %d\n", ntohs(si_other.sin_port), slen);

                unsigned short iphdrlen;
                struct iphdr* iph = (struct iphdr*)buf;
                iphdrlen =iph->ihl*4;

                printf("IP version :%d\n", ((unsigned int)((iph->version))));
                printf("protocol .. %d\n", ((unsigned int)(iph->protocol)));
                printf("total len .. %d\n", (ntohs(iph->tot_len)));
                error = ioctl(s, FIONREAD, &value);
                printf(" from ioctl UDP packet length is : %d error is : %d\n", value, error);
                printf(" Return code from recvfrom is : %d\n", ret);
                printf("Received packet from %s:%d\nData: %s\n\n",
                inet_ntoa(si_other.sin_addr), ntohs(si_other.sin_port), buf);

                int j=0;
                for ( j = 0; j <20; j++)
                {
                        char x = buf[j];
                        short int i;
                        for (i=1;i<9;i++)
                        {
                                ((x | (1<<8-i)) == x)?printf("1"):printf("0");
                        }
                        printf(" ");
                }
                printf("\n");
        }


        close(s);
        return 0;
}

And the output I am receivingis as follows:

 source port is : 4232 16
IP version :1
protocol .. 65
total len .. 4096
 from ioctl UDP packet length is : 0 error is : 0
 Return code from recvfrom is : 0
Received packet from 127.0.0.1:4232
Data: 

00010000 00000001 00010000 00000000 11110001 00010001 00010001 00100100 01000100 01000001 00010001 00100100 01000100 01000000 00000000 00010000 00000000 00010000 10100000 10100000 

The above decrypted data matched with my sent data.

Answer 1

How did you create your socket ? Is it a raw socket (SOCK_RAW) or a dgram socket (SOCK_DGRAM) ? In the second case, you won't get ip/udp headers, only payload.

By the way, the packet length is the returned value of the function recvfrom - in your case, the "ret" variable. Check recvfrom man page.

Answer 2

Short answer (although it is already in the comments above): recvfrom returns the number of bytes received.

Answer 3

problem is here:

if (ret=recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (struct sockaddr *)&si_other, &slen)==-1)

rewrite it as:

ret=recvfrom(s, buf, BUFLEN, 0, (struct sockaddr *)&si_other, &slen)
if (ret==-1)
{
}

ret will contain the number of bytes