Thanks to everybody who pointed out that autodiscovery via DNS would be an option, but even relying on the fact that DNS is up and running isn't an option, since one of the reasons i want to do this is that if the main server is unavailable, some 'grunts' can simply plug in a spare server, restart the program on the client machines, and my program will simply find the new server, reconfigure itself, and go on doing what it was doing (a Point of Sale in this case).