Sending Information over a network

I have computers connected in a wifi netwrok. One of them serves as a root(lets call it server), and is directly or indirectly connected to all other computers(lets call them clients). I want to send some information from root to all nodes(information is different for each node).

Is there a way to do this without running an开发者_C百科y program on the client side(similar to PING) ?

Or the only possible way is by using sockets over client and server?

Is there a way to do this without running any program on the client side(similar to PING)? Yes, provided that you don't care that the clients will never do anything with the information.

Seriously, without something on the client listening for and doing something with the data you send from the server, what do you expect?

Ping does not actually send any data to the client. It just roundtrips a packet.

To receive the information you need some kind of service running on the client. Sockets are needed. For minimal communication (not reliable) use UDP and for more reliable use TCP.