advice about a network app

Sorry, but Java isn't my language, so I'm showing my ignorance.

My assignment is to create a number (35-40) client apps on a network
segment that will communicate with a server that also resides on the
segment. The clients accept queries from the server and reply to the
server. Queries are like, 'How many cases have you processed this
hour?, and replies can be an integer from 0 on up. The language in the
spec is Java.

The part that stumps me is building an application that will actually
place a client on a node and start it. I'm thinking about something
like this:

    public static void main(String[] args) {
          read configuration file that has the node name, IP addresse
and port of the network nodes
          // each line looks like this: node1:192.168.100.1:9876
          String line = readline();
          ServerNode sn = new ServerNode(line);
           start(sn);
          line = readline();
          while (line =! null) {
               ClientNode cn = new ClientNode(line);
                deploy cn to appropriate machine depending on IP
address;
                start(cn);
                line = readline();
          }
    }

Unfortunately, I'm having trouble getting started. Any suggestions as
to here to look? I don't have physical access to each machine to
deploy each client. Each node is gauranteed to have a JVM.

Thanks, CC.
     }