title: Communicating between mobile devices over a local network
body: <p>I'm a complete newbie with regards to developing for Android, and for starters I'm trying to develop a simple card game that can be played multiplayer over a local network. I'm having trouble finding a starting point for how I would go about this, I can find plenty of things for communicating across the internet but not having much luck seeing how you communicate directly between two devices over a LAN.</p>
  
  <p>It's a major part of my plan for this app that it be multi-platform and that iOS devices and Android devices can play against each other, so I'm looking for a method that supports this. I know it's possible as I can see there are other apps that have this functionality.</p>
  
  <p>I don't need a detailed implementation (although the more help the better!) but if anyone could just point me in the right direction for how to go about something like this, I'd be really grateful.</p>