Network Protocols Assignment

This project is part of a laboratory session. The task involves designing and implementing a custom communication protocol between a server and multiple clients.

Description

The task involves the development of a communication protocol between a server and multiple clients, designed to facilitate basic arithmetic operations. The server acts as a computational engine that can perform three specific tasks: multiplication of signed integers, calculation of the average of integers, and subtraction of two sets of integers.

Supported Operations

The server supports the following three operations:

1. Multiplication

   • Multiplies N signed integers.
   • N must be between 2 and 10.
   • Each integer must be in the range -5 to 5.
   • Returns a single integer as the product.

2. Average

   • Calculates the average of N unsigned integers.
   • N must be between 2 and 20.
   • Each integer must be in the range 0 to 200.
   • Returns a float or integer as the average result.

3. Set Subtraction

   • Accepts two sets of N unsigned integers.
   • N must be between 2 and 10.
   • Each integer must be in the range 0 to 60000.
   • Returns a new set of N integers, where each value is the result of subtracting the corresponding value of the second set from the first.

Client Behavior

• Sends a command to the server specifying the operation and the required input numbers.
• Receives:
  • The result of the operation, or
  • An error message describing the type of input validation failure (e.g., out-of-range values).

Server Behavior

• Accepts multiple client connections simultaneously (multithreaded or multiprocessing based on lab session 3).
• Validates inputs and responds accordingly.
• Maintains communication using a custom protocol with structured headers and payloads.

Deliverables

1. Executable Python code for the Server.
2. Executable Python code for the Client.

Technical Guidelines

• Number range examples:
  • 1-byte unsigned = 0 to 255
  • 2-byte unsigned = 0 to 65535
  • 4-byte unsigned = 0 to 4294967295
  • 1-byte signed = -128 to 127
  • 2-byte signed = -32768 to 32767
  • 4-byte signed = -2147483648 to 2147483647

Execution

You can test the application by running both the server and multiple clients. Inputs can be:

• Read from the keyboard
• Randomly generated using built-in Python functions

Course: Network Protocols

Institution: University of Piraeus

Let me know if you'd like to include a .gitignore template for venv as well.