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What happened?

Title: FlexRadio discovery does not detect radios on Windows 11
What happened?

AetherSDR fails to discover FlexRadio transceivers on Windows 11.

The application launches normally, but automatic radio discovery does not find any available radios on the local network. Because discovery fails, the radio selection/connect workflow cannot proceed.

This appears to affect the SmartSDR/Flex discovery mechanism specifically on Windows. The issue was observed using:

AetherSDR 26.5.1
Qt 6.8.3
Windows 11

No radio connection is established because discovery never populates the available radio list.

Based on the project architecture and SmartSDR discovery model, this may involve UDP broadcast/multicast socket handling, Windows-specific network interface enumeration, firewall interaction, or Qt network stack behavior under Qt 6.8.x on Windows.

What did you expect?

AetherSDR should automatically discover FlexRadio devices on the local network and display them in the radio chooser/connect UI, similar to SmartSDR behavior on the same LAN.

When a compatible radio is powered on and reachable, it should appear in the discovered radio list without requiring manual intervention.

Steps to reproduce
Install AetherSDR 26.5.1 on Windows 11
Launch the application
Ensure a FlexRadio transceiver is available on the same local network
Wait for automatic discovery to occur
Observe that no radios appear in the discovery/connect window
Radio model & firmware
Radio model: Not connected / discovery never completes
Firmware: Unknown (unable to connect)
OS & version
OS: Windows 11
AetherSDR version: 26.5.1
Qt version: 6.8.3
Developer Notes

Based on the project architecture described in CLAUDE.md, the most likely areas involved are the Flex discovery and network transport layers responsible for SmartSDR UDP discovery broadcasts and TCP session establishment.

Potential areas to investigate:

Likely source files
src/network/
src/flex/
src/discovery/
src/core/network/
src/radio/

Particularly anything handling:

UDP discovery sockets
QUdpSocket initialization
Multicast/broadcast handling
Network interface enumeration
Windows-specific socket flags
Discovery packet parsing
SmartSDR discovery beacons

Likely classes/functions may include:

Flex discovery manager/service
Radio discovery model
Network interface scanner
UDP listener initialization
Discovery packet parser
Auto-connect workflow
Windows-specific areas to review

Qt 6.8.x on Windows may behave differently with:

Broadcast permissions
IPv4 vs IPv6 interface selection
QNetworkInterface::allInterfaces()
Multiple adapters (VPNs, Hyper-V, Docker, WSL)
Windows Defender Firewall restrictions
Binding to 0.0.0.0
ReuseAddressHint / ShareAddress socket flags

Discovery issues on Windows are commonly caused by:

Binding to the wrong network interface
Failure to join multicast groups
UDP broadcast packets blocked by firewall
IPv6-preferred socket behavior
Missing socket option initialization order
Qt event loop timing/race conditions during startup
Suggested logging categories

In Help → Support, enable verbose logging for:

Discovery
Network
UDP transport
Flex protocol
SmartSDR communication
Socket initialization
Interface enumeration
Connection manager

Useful diagnostics would include:

Enumerated network adapters
Socket bind addresses/ports
Discovery packet RX/TX events
Multicast/broadcast join success/failure
Windows socket error codes
Firewall-related bind failures
Whether discovery packets are received at all
Additional debugging suggestions

Useful checks during investigation:

Verify discovery packets arrive using Wireshark
Compare behavior against SmartSDR on the same machine/network
Force IPv4-only discovery temporarily
Log selected network interface IDs and addresses
Test behavior with VPN/virtual adapters disabled
Confirm readyRead() is triggered on Windows
Compare Linux/macOS discovery implementation against Windows code paths

This may ultimately be a Windows-specific Qt networking regression or an interface-selection issue introduced in Qt 6.8.x.

What did you expect?

No response

Steps to reproduce

1. Turn on radio and connect to same LAN as AetherSDR
2. Select Discovery in AetherSDR
3. Fails to discovery radio even though UDP packets on 4992 are being received.

AetherSDR version

26.5.1

Radio model & firmware

FLEX-6600 4.2.18

Operating system

Windows

OS version and hardware

Windows 11 Pro