Scope of Intended Program -- Network Programming

[elmousa]

I am in the process of writing a program for our department as follows:
We have about 40 field directorates in addition to the central department. Each field directorate has its own LAN and is connected to the central department through our WAN. I need to write a program that would:
1. On startup, scan the network to determine which directorates/PC's are connected.
2. Upon user action, send a file from the host machine to all connected computers and store it in a specific folder.

Given that I am a newbie network programmer/c++ programmer, where can I find guidance on how to achieve this task?

[elmousa]

If you guys think I don't know what I'm talking about, please say so... :o)
If the PC's in the field directorate's, each has the destination folder (the folder into which the file is to written) as a shared folder, would that folder be accessible?

[mike_2000_17]

I would say this isn't something that you would do in C++. There are many system administration tools that would help you implement this as a script that is scheduled to run periodically and upon connection of any new "directorate".

For example, the rsync utility would be perfect for the job. Just have it scheduled as a cron task or any other job scheduler.

And if you use shared network drives, then you shouldn't even need to do this at all.

This is really a system administration question.

[elmousa]

Maybe I was overstretching it a bit. I am actually an Oracle programmer :o)
I work in a government ministry in Jordan which provides its services through field directorates which are present in the various areas of Jordan. We have a requirement to update the files used by the employees in the computerized database system (not the database itself). rsync (deltacopy) might turn out to be a viable option.
Thank you for your input.