So, what I'm requesting is a high level description of the empeg ethernet protocol

As far as I know nobody has done that, but I may be able to point you in the right direction in the JEmplode sources. Take a look at org/jempeg/empeg/protocol/NetworkEmpegDiscoverer.java it sends a broadcast UDP packet containing "?" to the network on port 8300. Any empegs on the network send a packet back that includes a name and id (I assume you can select an empeg based on one of those values).

Actually I may have some perl code floating around that does this as well (trying to find out why an older version of jemplode would not find my player) if anybody wants it.

-Mike