AIM socket buddy list

Been messing around with socket programming for a month and a half or so and have finally decided to go balls to the walls and make something that I will actually use. I want to be able to have the program listen on the AIM port (5190) and when a person logs on or off the program would get the time that they logged on and their aim handle. The trouble with this is that for the most part these people do not have static IP's and I don't see any possible way to get their handle. I have the basic outline of the program I just don't have these two or so parts.

you'd have to find a way for the program to pull the ip off the s/n's connection(obviously). In order to aquire a person using aim's ip, you would have to break the law.

Is there not a way to dump the contents of the incoming packets from them and shift through them and find the sn?

maybe you can make it work like a packet sniffer, except only port 5190?

i know when you direct connect to someone, you can get their IP that way.

See the thing is that I don't believe having their IP will work for what I am doing. These people for the majority are on dial up which means that they are signed a new or different IP address each time that they dial into their ISP. What seems to be the way to go would be to look into the packets that are recieved from port 5190 or ones that are associated with port 5190. Some how the handle's get to this computer and they must come across 5190. I was asking this question to see if anyone was along the same line of thought or if anyone had done something along this line before and wished to share their experience.

You could try looking into how GAIM works, it is an Open Source program so you can just pop it open and look through the code. Or you could even go to #gaim on freenode or the mailing list and ask there.

http://www.ethereal.com/
For all your sniffing needs.