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Hotline Tracker Discovery
**Hotline Tracker Discovery** is a service used primarily for finding available Hotline servers, popular in late 1990s and early 2000s for community chat, file sharing, and messaging. The protocol allows Hotline clients to locate tracker servers that maintain listings of available Hotline community servers..
Hotline Tracker Discovery on UDP port 5499 was an essential part of the Hotline Connect ecosystem. Clients broadcast queries on this port to locate tracker servers, which maintained lists of alive Hotline community servers for users to join. Communication was lightweight and connectionless, favoring UDP for speed and efficiency in the discovery process.
The protocol operates by sending simple query packets which tracker servers answer with available server information, IP addresses, and service details. This decentralizes the process of finding servers, increasing flexibility but also relying heavily on trackers staying updated and maintained.
Although largely obsolete today, the protocol historically enabled dynamic discovery and connection management for a distributed social networking and file exchange environment, predating many modern peer-to-peer service discovery approaches.