Suggested: protocol::zeroconf, protocol::mdns, and protocol::dns-sd

[Teddy Hogeborn]

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Enrico Zini <enrico at enricozini.org> writes:

> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 03:20:40AM +0100, Teddy Hogeborn wrote:
>
>> I suggest that the following three tags be added:
>> 
>> protocol::zeroconf
>>         ZeroConf; see <http://www.zeroconf.org/>
>> protocol::mdns
>>         mDNS; see <http://www.multicastdns.org/>
>> protocol::dns-sd
>>         DNS-SD; see <http://www.dns-sd.org/>
>> 
>> An "apt-cache search" on any of these terms shows that a lot of
>> packages in Debian use these protocols.  In addition, at least some
>> packages use them without saying so in the package description; for
>> instance the "mandos" and "mandos-client" packages.
>
> I have no objection about adding those tags, except one question: is
> it better to consider them as separate protocols, or is it better to
> create only one tag that encompasses them all?

Well, they *are* separate protocols, but are mostly in practice used
together; mDNS plus DNS-SD plus IPv4LL *is* ZeroConf, more or less.
And IPv4LL is not needed if the machines already have an IP address
configured; this makes IPv4LL something only used on startup; normal
programs assume that an IP address is configured already and just use
mDNS and/or DNS-SD directly.

> My impression is that those three protocols are normally found
> together and so it could be useful to consider them as part of the
> same "protocol suite".  In fact,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeroconf also mentions mDNS and DNS-SD
> as the "Name Resolution" and "Service discovery" part of zeroconf.
> That would make it look feasible to have one protocol::zeroconf tag
> and describe it as including one or more of IPV4LL, mDNS and DNS-SD.

Well, some programs do seem to use mDNS or DNS-SD without implying the
use of the rest of ZeroConf; see for example libnss-mdns.

> I'm not a zeroconf expert though, so I'll accept your judgement.

If you want to be conservative about adding tags, you might add only
protocol::zeroconf to begin with and revisit the issue about mDNS and
DNS-SD at some later date, to see if more programs use the protocols
separately.

I guess one should, in that case, tag for instance libnss-mdns with
protocol::zeroconf, even though it does not concern itself with all of
the ZeroConf protocols.

/Teddy Hogeborn, not a ZeroConf expert either

- -- 
The Mandos Project
http://www.fukt.bsnet.se/mandos
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