Re: [NTLK] TCP/IP on Newton?

From: Mark Benson (markbenson_at_mac.com)
Date: Wed Oct 22 2003 - 13:16:59 PDT


On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 08:44 PM, Nathan Turnage wrote:

> This reminds me, does anyone know what "ZeroConf" means in the whole
> rendezvous thing?

Rendezvous is Apple's automatic discovery frmaework that is built using
the standards laid out in the ZeroConf open standard for self
discovering, zero configuration networking using TCP/IP. This is an
open standard that is free for anyone to impliment. Therefore Microsoft
have naturally shunned it in favour of Universal Plug 'n' Play (uPnP) -
which has suffered constant security problems (people abusing it to
access a network illegally mostly).

ZeroConf has the advantage of using conventional Unix tools to deploy
it's self discovery system. The naming of machines is handled by a form
of the 'NameD' DNS service, allowing names, such as the names used in
Rendezvous like 'computer.local' to be used as DNS expressions in
TCP/IP processes. The simplest example being you type 'ping
computer.local' in Mac OS X (where 'computer' is the name of any
Rendezvous machine) and it will ping it's IP address without needing
any additional input.

> Also, does it work like Samba?

Samba itself is not self discovering. It uses a protocol called
'NetBIOS' (included as part of modern UNIX Samba) that is self
discovering. NetBIOS either functions peer-to-peer or you can set a
central 'WINS' werver which acts as a neame holder for all the machines
set to connect with it. As far as I know there are no plans to make
Rendezvous and NetBIOS interact, however they are both used
side-by-side in Mac OS X.

In the last 6 months Apple have insisted Rendezvous and uPnP will run
side by side, and they just proved it by incorporating Rendezvous
sharing support in the Windows version of iTunes.

> Enquiring minds like mine want to know.

Good. The day a mind stops being curious... and all that.

-- 
Mark Benson
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