Pure raw sockets

[Lycaon]

I am familiarizing myself with a bunch of different RFCs, and at the moment have a decent DHCP server programmed... One of the things a good server does is send ARP broadcasts to potential addresses to make sure that no other machine uses them.

 

Long story short, VB.NET doesn't naitively support ARP and at the moment I'd rather not use the iphelper API. I've seen you can specify RAW for both the protocol type and the socket type, however, I've never been able to get it to send (or recieve) raw packets (meaning I want the entire header, etc. which is 'under' the IP layer, and thus, apparently inaccessible to .NET's sockets)

 

Is there any way at all to recieve (or send) my own raw packets in .NET?

[Diesel]

There's a thread in here somewhere that talks about receiving and decoding a raw datagram.

[Lycaon]

Thanks for replying, but I realized I may not have been clear enough in my previous post. I was wondering if it were possible to receive data *below* the IP layer.

[Mister E]

A socket is a TCP/IP mechanism and is defined with both an IP and port number. If you want to receive data below the network layer (where IP resides) then it is going to involve placing your NIC into "promiscuous mode" and monitoring the raw data on your network segment.

 

This might be of use.