I think the ACE Framework it's the best around here ... try that : http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ACE.html

Assuming that you have only one network interface (your eth card) and a loopback interface (127.0.0.1), i think you could try to get the name of the local computer, and then resolve it in an ip address . char szMyComputerName[0xFF] = {0}, szMyIpAddress[0xFF] = {0}; DWORD dwSize = 0xFF; ::GetComputerName(szMyComputerName,&dwSize); Now all you have to to is to resolve 'szMyComputerName' as you did in your example . Naturally, if you have more than one network interface (eth card, wireless, etc), you have to enumerate them and then you choose the one you want to work on : SOCKET sd = WSASocket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0, 0, 0, 0); INTERFACE_INFO InterfaceList[20]; unsigned long nBytesReturned; WSAIoctl( sd, SIO_GET_INTERFACE_LIST, 0, 0, &InterfaceList, sizeof(InterfaceList), &nBytesReturned, 0, 0); for( int i = 0; i < nBytesReturned / sizeof(INTERFACE_INFO); i++ ) { printf( "Interface[%d] : %s\n",i, inet_ntoa( ((sockaddr_in *)&(InterfaceList[i].iiAddress))->sin_addr ) ) } Hope i helped ....:)