Multicast Ping (Windows)

I am trying to implement server auto discovery so that clients will be able to see a list of servers available to connect to. I would like to auto discover servers even if they are in different subnets.

I have read that windows does not respond to broadcast ping, but is it possible to make all these servers to join a multicast group and use multicast ping on the group to see what s开发者_StackOverflowervers are up?

Thanks

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Try Zero configuration networking (Zeroconf).

Note multiple LAN segments requires routers to be configured to route multicast traffic, they do not by default. Similarly IGMP enabled switches are usually recommended for computer connectivity.