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Apple Releases Rendezvous for Linux, Java, Windows
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Jun 30, 2004 02:23 PM
from the it's-french-so-it-sounds-sexy dept.
from the it's-french-so-it-sounds-sexy dept.
mblase writes "Apple released yesterday a developers preview of their Rendezvous technology for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Java. Rendezvous is an open protocol which uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically find each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers."
Reader xxdarkxxmatterxx adds a link to a story at Macworld about the release."
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Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine that this makes MS particularly happy, but there's certainly not much they can do about it. Rendevous is seriously a cool technology, and I'm glad Apple decided to release it before MS came up with something similar but incompatible (and, of course, under their control).
Admittedly this argument could be made for Solaris, etc. But I would imagine those communities welcome this addition, whereas I would imagine MS to be a bit colder to the idea.
In any event, kudos to Apple.
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Insightful)
But if you have a home network (TiVo, HiFi with something like AirTunes Express, and iTunes in your PC/Mac), this is great.
No, this isn't a solution for everything, but neither is using a cannon to kill flies.
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UPNP vs zeroconf/rendezvous (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparisons [oreillynet.com] have been done. I'd rather have low traffic and better service separation vs the "use-http-for-everything" strategy.
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Re:UPNP vs zeroconf/rendezvous (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, it looks like the largest drawback to UPnP is that it defines too much and becomes inflexible. While the current implementation of Rendezvous is directed at home networks and networks without much infrastructure, I can't see why it couldn't scale out. If / when it scales out, it will intrude on more than just UPnP. It could also kick butt all over MS's UDDI for web services. Here's a scenario for which I could profitably use a more scalable Rendezvous type functionality, where neither UPnP or UDDI would work well:
A service gets a name, independent of the machine. Clients of all types find and connect to the service. For example, we've got a critical Job Status service, that collects information about myriad automated jobs so that the staff responsible for a set of jobs can quickly check if any of their jobs are misbehaving.
Say the computer running the Job Status service blows up and rolls over to a different device (or we painfully restore it on another device). Certain fancy expensive data base servers handle this rollover smoothly - but not my home grown application. I get it almost for free with Rendezvous (expect moving the service). Because the client connects to a service name, it finds the new service seamlessly. No configuration file push, no changing C-Names in the active directory (which requires arguing with about 4 departments in my company) . Just bring up the same service name on a new device.
Rendezvous could apply to any service - not just web services as with UDDI. Also unlike UDDI, there is no need for a single point of failure (the server with the UDDI directory). Unlike UPNP, I don't have to jump through hoops to describe my service, or attempt to conform it to an existing specification - and the current ones are really focussed on devices. I don't really care about describing my service in grand detail. I can assume an application designed to work with knows how it works.
The main thing missing from Rendezvous for this scenario is scalability. Rendezvous could solve this easily by stealing the controller model for UPnP. Put up 5 or 10 controllers on our 10,000 device network. Each client knows about a few of them. You can handle the load and don't have a single point of failure.
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Re:UPNP vs zeroconf/rendezvous (Score:5, Informative)
Comparisons have been done. I'd rather have low traffic and better service separation vs the "use-http-for-everything" strategy
You are focusing on the part that doesn't matter. I suspect that in real life, you'd have a hard time finding any performance difference due to the heavier traffic. It's lost in the noise.
The part that is important is specifying the commands and data to/from devices. We learned this lesson back with SCSI-1. When you leave important things up to each vendor (like the way Rendezvous leaves stuff in unstructured text fields for the vendors to define), you end up having to build into your host software a bunch of vendor-specific knowledge. You end up not being able to just go buy and plug in a printer or scanner or whatever and have it work, because the vendor hasn't released documentation to the Linux developers yet.
Notice how much cleaner everything was with SCSI-2 due to having all the important commands specified in the standard, so that you could have generic disk and tape and other drivers that utilized all the device capabilities.
It seems to me that Rendezvous is making the SCSI-1 mistake, which was understandable for SCSI-1 since they didn't have anything to apply hindsight to. The Rendezvous people should be able to look at SCSI-1, though, and see the importance of complete device specifications.
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Re:UPNP vs zeroconf/rendezvous (Score:5, Interesting)
Which already exists as other protocols. It's better to separate the device/application-specific stuff from the transport. We learned that lesson from IP.
We learned this lesson back with SCSI-1.
No, we didn't. Your example ignores the fact that protocols already exist to perform these functions. Why reengineer IPP when it already exists?
A lightweight approach is best, which is what Zeroconf provides.
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess which protocol our device now supports?
uPnP may be technically superior, but more devices will support zeroconf.
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
That's 6 MONTHS versus 2 WEEKS.
Bryan
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
Many would disagree. O'Reilly wrote up a good piece [oreillynet.com] about the two technologies a while back. Its a good overview of what they offer and the pros and cons of each.
A quick rundown? Zeroconf (Rendezvous) provides a way to discover services and addresses automatically, without address duplication by multiple devices. UPnP does the same thing. The difference is that UPnP also dictates HOW to talk to devices and services, while Zeroconf forces devices to know how to talk to each other.
Taft
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, and at the risk of ruining a perfectly good karma, I will point out that after trying and failing for half an hour to print a web-based document from my Linux machine on my employer's network printers, I put my PowerBook on the net and started the print job in less than 30 seconds via Rendezvous discovery.
But the really cool thing is that the HP printers on the net show up in Safari's Bookmark bar Rendezvous menu, providing HTML interfaces for printer status and settings.
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
No one is using UPNP that I know of.
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast User Switching.
Even Jobs admits MS beat them to it.
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, because that one security flaw sure was a bitch.
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So let's see... (Score:5, Interesting)
Following the link to the developer site we find that:
Rendezvous requires that devices implement three essential things. These devices must be able to
allocate IP addresses without a DHCP server
translate between names and IP addresses without a DNS server
locate or advertise services without using a directory server
ok...
Re:So let's see... (Score:5, Informative)
A prime example of Rendevous is two Powerbooks in a cafe, both with Airport wireless. You can set up an Ad Hoc wireless network between these computers, and they will auto configure their IP's and other information so that they can talk to each other. Then open up any Rendevous enabled app and you'll be able to see the other users resources, i.e. bookmarks, printers, music, etc.
So Rendevous is not designed to replace DNS/DHCP, but merely to find a way for network configuration when there is no established network structure. Rendevous also works on networks where DNS and DHCP are available, without any change. This is really the beauty of it, because it can determine what configuration is necessary and do whatever needed to get the computers networked, all transparently!
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Re:So let's see... (Score:5, Informative)
It's not so much that it's not completely accurate as it is that it's completely wrong.
Rendezvous has nothing to do with DNS, DHCP, or directory services. It's a service discovery framework, and that's all. Here's how it works.
Let's say you've got some program, Foo.app, that has a feature for talking to other instances of Foo.app over the network. Doesn't matter what it is. It could be iTunes music sharing or iChat or distributed compilation or whatever you want.
Without Rendezvous, you'd have to tell your instance of Foo.app where to find other instances. That'd require some kind of setup and some kind of maintenance.
With Rendezvous, your instance of Foo.app sends out a single multicast message when it starts up. That message says that there's an instance of Foo.app available at our IP address. Other instances on the network receive that message and make a note of it. They maintain a list in memory of available services, all automatically, without your intervention.
Does this involve a lot of network traffic? Not really. It requires some, but not much. When an instance of Foo.app starts up, it (1) announces its own presence, and (2) sends out a multicast request for other instances, and the other instances reply. When Foo.app shuts down, it sends out an announcement of its own termination. That's it.
Does this involve terrible security risks? Not really. All Rendezvous does is publish the availability of services that are already running on the network. The responder daemon itself doesn't run with any privileges (on a Mac, it runs as the "nobody" user), and all Rendezvous requests are handled by that one daemon. If something magical happened and somebody was able to get mDNSResponder to run arbitrary code, there would have to be another exploitable security hole somewhere else on the system, because mDNSResponder doesn't have privilege to do anything.
A prime example of Rendevous is two Powerbooks in a cafe, both with Airport wireless. You can set up an Ad Hoc wireless network between these computers, and they will auto configure their IP's and other information so that they can talk to each other.
That's not Rendezvous. That's nothing more than self-assigned IP addresses. When your computer can't find a DHCP server, it self-assigns an address in the 169.254/16 network. Which means any two computers on the same network segment that have self-assigned IPs can talk to each other. This has been around since long before Rendezvous.
So Rendevous is not designed to replace DNS/DHCP, but merely to find a way for network configuration when there is no established network structure.
No, that's overstating it. The sole purpose of Rendezvous is service discovery. That's it. It's independent of network configuration. It works with or without DHCP, DNS, or any other network stuff. As long as you've got an IP address, Rendezvous does its thing.
This is really the beauty of it, because it can determine what configuration is necessary and do whatever needed to get the computers networked, all transparently!
No, no, NO! That's not Rendezvous, that's DHCP. Rendezvous is ONLY for service discovery. Rendezvous doesn't set your IP address or your routing table or your hostname resolution parameters. It doesn't do any of those things. All it does is facilitate service announcement and discovery for your applications.
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Re:So let's see... (Score:5, Informative)
Dynamic Configuration of IPv4 Link-Local Addresses [zeroconf.org]: In the absence of a DHCP server, the machine is able to configure itself with an IP address in a reserved range such that it doesn't clash with other IP addresses configured by other machines on the same network in a similar manner.
Multicast DNS [multicastdns.org]: Multicast DNS Responder services on each machine respond to multicast queries for their DNS information.
DNS-based Service Discovery [dns-sd.org]: Querying for the existence of services (HTTP, FTP, SSH, etc.) via DNS.
So, in a sense, "everything is a DNS/DHCP/Directory server" but only for the information and services provided by that particular machine.
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This is great! (Score:5, Funny)
This sounds like they are getting ready (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This sounds like they are getting ready (Score:5, Insightful)
- Because in the world of protocols, your "standard" isn't actually a standard unless you can get other people to follow it. Making it easy for others to follow you gives you influence the industry.
- Because Apple would rather live in an open world than in a Microsoft world. (Don't forget, Rendezvous is *not* an Apple invention. It's Apple's name for "zero-conf," and Apple never claimed to have invented it. Apple just made it popular.)
- Because Apple's not selling Rendezvous anyway. They're selling computers, and people will buy Apple computers if they play nicely with others, and if it's easy for others to play nicely with them.
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Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
for B = 0 to 255
for C = 0 to 255
for D = 0 to 255
ping A.B.C.D
if (there was a response) then store A.B.C.D in list Q
next
next
next
next
print list Q
Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
How many script kiddies do you think are going to copy that code and try to compile or execute it?
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Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
bbh
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Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot to initialize Q to a null list...
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Appletalk for IP (Score:5, Interesting)
Im ready (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found it! (Score:5, Funny)
Microwave set to 1 minute
Your food is cooking.
Your food is done.
Apple supports Internet Explorer??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that Apple today joined the announcement with Mozilla and Opera of open-standards for web plugins it surprises me that their product even suggests the use of Internet Explorer.
I freely admit to hoping, someday, for Safari on Windows and using Firefox until that day (And pls don't reply saying Safari is on Windows in iTunes.. iTMS on Windows doesn't use Webcore, more's the pity.)
DNS-SD (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is the case, it seems a pretty clever and resourceful approach.
Then again, this will make DNS servers the main entry point for discovering information about networks, especially information that might normally not be publicly available.
Personally, I like this approach because far less people have access to manage detailed DNS data and may actually be able to manage these things effectively, but there's also a ton of people out there who have insecure DNS information and adoption of this approach among those admins who haven't secured their networks might create an even bigger security problem.
I should point out... (Score:5, Informative)
For anyone who is interested, Rendezvous is Apple's implementation of of ZeroConf [zeroconf.org]
While Apple's Rendezvous overview [apple.com] gives some decent information, the ZeroConf site provides a lot of good technical resources.
Apple really needed ZeroConf as they transitioned to all-IP networking. Although OS X supports AppleTalk, the AppleTalk protocol has clearly seen it's day and the world is clearly moving to IP-only. Previously, when Macintosh machines were largely communicating via AppleTalk, all of the things that ZeroConf addresses were handled by the AppleTalk protocol suite (service discovery, address allocation, etc), and this ease of use that is signature to the Macintosh is important for Apple to maintain.
That said, Apple releasing this code is pretty significant, as aside from this project [sourceforge.net], there hasn't been much use of ZeroConf in the wild.
Rendezvous for Pocket PCs (Score:5, Informative)
Rendezvous really helps laptop users (Score:5, Interesting)
Several times I've had the need to print something while in an unfamiliar network. It takes just a few seconds to find and send a job to a printer using Rendezvous. At first it seems ludicrously easy, like it won't actually work. But it does.
In a laptop-centric world, Rendezvous makes life a lot easier.
Apple does solid software (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple continues to surprise me with their interest in designing software that is compatible for the Windows platform in addition to their own (and in this case, also Unix and GNU/Linux). While from Microsoft, they have typically steered to their flagship products and rarely ported them (with the exception of Office and IE) to other OSes.
Even as a frequent Windows user I have great respect for Apple and find their software for Windows actually crashes less then Microsoft made software(!). In addition, they are rarely so deeply entrenched in the OS that if you wanted ot change extension preferences it doesn't fuss as much.
I'd be interested in trying out this new technology and I'm sure it will make it big hit on all network sizes. Good thing for Apple that they released the specs before MS could claim any competing service! Let's all give some positive input to see this software hit new limits!Rendesvous, Tiger, and NT (Score:5, Interesting)
NT Migration Tool Tiger Server makes it a snap to upgrade your aging Windows NT network to a Mac OS X server. The new NT Migration Tool automatically extracts all of your user and group account information from an existing Windows Primary Domain Controller and moves it into Open Directory. Tiger Server can then take over as your Primary Domain Controller for your Windows clients and even host your Windows users' home directories, group folders, roaming profiles and shared printers.
So they're making it easier for NT users to migrate their network over to Tiger when it is released. And now this Rendesvous news. Sounds like Apple is quite serious about wanting to be a player in the enterprise server market if you ask me.
Mod me redundant (Score:5, Interesting)
Rendezvouz enabled clients on my home network will find my linux box available over rendezvouz for AFP, FTP, SSH, HTTP and IPP.
Mac users will feel (and have felt for quite some time) right at home on my network.
They beat microsoft to the punch. (Score:5, Informative)
From the alpha page, Windows Network Connected Device (NCD) Technology is a comprehensive set of Windows technologies that allow devices on a local network to discover, communicate with, and control each other.
Re:Cool. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Interesting)
I just purchased my first new Mac in 3 years [no, my 3year old DP800 is still more than powerful enough to be my main machine, it just wasn't portable *enough*]. I weighed many options and nearly went delerious trying to beat the Apple tax and all their silly pre-configured options. I seriously looked at one of those nice AMD64 laptops for a whole afternoon. But while I would have saved on the kit, I wouldn't be able to run an OS that somehow always manages to stay at or near the top of all the features with little to no hassle to set up and use. After the delerium abated, I settled on a stripped down 15" PBG4 1.33GHz tricked out with 3rd party RAM. I swear that the desire to lick my backlit keyboard in the dark still has not abated...
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Funny)
willfully subsidizing these kinds of projects
Do you have trouble dealing in the abstract?
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, an x86 port of MacOS is never going to happen. Apple is first and foremost a hardware company. Most people don't buy Macs because of thier hardware, MacOS is the selling point, the hardware is just an expensive tax that you need to pay in order to get MacOS. If they ported it to the Intel platform suddenly people could pirate MacOS and run it without paying the hardware tax.
Apples bottom line wouldn't look very attractive
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple was "paid off" but the payoff was to drop a lawsuit not to drop development of "rhapsody for Intel" and/or "rhapsody for Windows" which had already been abandoned.
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Apple did have an OS for Intel hardware (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:La di da (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean honestly - you whine that it needs to be open so you can code the changes you need, and then you whine when it's finally opened because it doesn't have the features coded for you in advance?
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Re:WOW! (Score:5, Informative)
Another nice feature is that nodes can cache the results of other nodes' queries. Since all of the DNS traffic is mulitcast on the local subnet, every node sees every query and every response. Apple's code expolits this to further reduce the need for duplicate queries. It's a pretty nice setup.
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Re:Confusion. (Score:5, Informative)
- automatic link-local IP addressing for cases where DHCP fails (like APIPA)
- multicast DNS for announcing device names (.local domain)
- service announcements and discovery via DNS-SD
Mac OS X also supported SLP, but Rendezvous / ZeroConf is clearly the more comprehensive technology, as several projects (such as GNOME) are actually moving *over*.
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