How do I detect an internet connection using Winsock? kinda like how AOL Instant Messenger waits for an internet connection and then connects. How does Quake2/Quake3 synchronize the latency with the ping time? If you can help me out, that would be very helpful! thanks

Those are huge questions worthy of a book. Synchronizing clients over IP is a large topic.

As for your first question. You could write a server that accepts connection data from your client. Everytime you connect you add a line to the data the server tracks. When you disconnect it removes the data from the server. Other people would only have to query the server at time intervals to determine if someone is online. You could optimize this and make it faster by allowing users to save friends lists to the server, and then having the server determine who to tell when the person logs on. The former is a passive way of doing it while the latter is an active approach to instant messenger.

Kressilac


Edited by - kressilac on 1/5/00 4:00:47 PM

Edited by - kressilac on 1/5/00 4:03:21 PM