Apple Releases Rendezvous for Linux, Java, Windows 426
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."
For all those that keep asking..... (Score:4, Interesting)
THIS is one of the reasons I'm prepared to pay a premium for Apple kit.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's probably talking about the fact that Apple doesn't offer the specs for the hardware inside the iPod so that he can run Linux on it and listen to Ogg... this is just my guess, but it's probably correct.
Mind, if he had looked at an iPod for a few minutes, he would have noticed that the guts of the iPod run on technology from PortalPlayer [portalplayer.com]
Apple can't open what it doesn't own...
At any rate... you best remember that this is the same type of person who would likely complain that they can't get easy access to the instruction set documentation for the processor in their stereo receiver.... ie .... best just ignore him.
If I had the points left, I'd mod him down as a troll.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:3)
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Informative)
You appear to be mistaken concerning the role that Rendezvous plays in an app like SEE. According to the SEE FAQ [codingmonkeys.de], the network protocol used to implement concurrent editing is BEEP [ietf.org].
What Rendezvous is used for is to automatically find other instances of SEE on the local LAN. That's not required for concurrent editing, and in fact SEE allows you to manually specify host names and/or addresses if you need to connect to a machine that Rendezvous can't find automatically.
With this release, the SubEthaEdit team might produce a port to Windows soon
Don't hold your breath. According to that same FAQ, SEE is Cocoa. Unless Apple decides to resurrect Yellow Box, aka OpenStep for Windows, Cocoa apps aren't easily portable to Windows.
BEEP is an open standard though, so you might be able to find a Windows editor that speaks that protocol and works with SEE.
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...
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:4, Funny)
If it were adopted for Linux and especially Windows I could finally see if it is any good.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Rendezvous is pretty good, it works as advertised. You do hit an important nail on the head with your observation though: put a bunch of Win, Mac, and Linux machines together on a LAN and the only really common way of communication they have is SMB. The Macs can talk to each other with Rendezvous, but the Lin and Win boxes aren't joining in.
At work, I run Debian on an almost completely Windows LAN (I may be the only person running Linux on it) and have no problem authenticating to our PDC and browsing the LAN. If you've never tried smb4k, check it out; it's a very nice SMB share browser which mounts shares in ~/smb4k/ for you; if smb4k could be merged with xfe, people transitioning from Windows Linux would hardly know they'd moved, except for the lack of security troubles and crashes
If there were any Macs on our internal network, I'd have to talk to them over SMB, same as with the Windows boxes.
Now, however, the possibility lies open for this to be adopted by Linux, giving a situation where you could throw a bunch Linux and Mac boxes on a network, turn them on, and just let them configure themselves. Or, just a bunch of Linux boxes.
Imagine you're a Linux consultant. You go to a potential customer's office to do a demo with a handful of live CDs that run rendezvous. You pop one into each of four or five PCs, at least one of which has a printer on it.
The machines boot up, they assign themselves IP addresses, find the printer, configure it, find the gateway and configure themselves to use it, and sit their happily waiting for someone to log in.
Then you say to the customer "By the way, the security model is a lot better than Windows, too."
If Linux adopts this and has it implemented well before Longhorn hits the street, it could really help to hurt MS on the business desktop.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Funny)
willfully subsidizing these kinds of projects
Do you have trouble dealing in the abstract?
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
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
You would be surprised. Outside of the eMac(which is basically just a machine to get OS X), all other apple hardware has some definite selling points.
A portion of
The iMac has a small form factor, it is very quiet(key among recording studios), and it is sleek, stylish, and dare I say almost sexy. Currently the iMac is a horrible deal, but I would bet on a performance boost and/or price drop beforre back to school season this year.
And I'm not going to start a G5 vs. AMD vs. Intel flamewar, but there are people who believe that the powermacs give the most bang for the buck(but then there are people who disagree, you make your own conclusions)
So Apple hardware(outside of the eMac of course) isn't all that bad. If you are going on pure performance per dollar then maybe it doesn't look great, but keep in mind people have a lot of different needs for their computers.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yup, I'm one of them.
Damn right. Sleek clean lines. Good build construction. Very small. Very light. Long battery life. Everything built-in (Firewire, Bluetooth, 802.11, USB2, Ethernet, DVI), slot loading drive, excellent screen quality. Runs Linux like a charm; almost all the bits are properly supported. CPU is a little gutless but it's more than enough for basics like web browsing, e-mail, office, and quake.
Yes, it was a little more expensive than an equivalent PC notebook. But the PC notebooks are just ugly.
Yeah, well I don't get sleep on mine, and the video card is nvidia so I don't get 3D either, but apart from that I'm a happy camper.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Informative)
Running a PowerBook with the lid closed is officially supported by Apple, and is mentioned in the instruction manual which is included with the machine. As long as the machine detects an external display and a USB keyboard plugged in, it will run perfectly in lid-closed mode.
I know this is different to closing the lid and then stuffing it into a backpack to use as an overgrown iPod, but the point is that lid-closed operation is not a 'banned' operation because of heat issues. It is very much supported for certain applications.
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.
Re:For all those that keep asking..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at Solaris on x86. It is very much the poor cousin of the SPARC version, because Sun can control the hardware for the SPARC version and ensure that it is thoroughly tested. Solaris x86 also runs reasonably well on Sun supplied x86 kit, for the same reason. Beyond that, you'd better make sure you pay close attention to the hardware compatibility lists (and, of course, you can't run any SPARC-Solaris binary apps, which are probably the reason you went with Solaris in the first place). OS X on x86 would share another disadvantage with Solaris on x86 - multithreading. Apps on the Mac usually make quite heavy use of multithreading, which is something that x86 does very badly (i.e. context switches on PowerPC are much less costly than x86), so the x86 version would almost certainly run noticeably slower. This would lead people to claim that Apple had released a `crippled' version of the software to drive demand for Macs.
Apple did have an OS for Intel hardware (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple did have an OS for Intel hardware (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apple did have an OS for Intel hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
There must be something going on behind the scenes where Apple and Microsoft have made a deal to keep their operating systems on separate platforms. If Apple released an OS for the intel platform, Microsoft could probably easily release a version of Windows for Mac hardware. That would be a head-on confrontation worth watching.
Ironically, when Pink came out, IBM still had leverage with OS/2, so they still had some influence over the intel platform. If Apple and IBM both adopted Pink, they would probably have had an opportunity to curb Microsoft's dominance, compared to the chances of that happening today. Apple probably didn't release Rhapsody for intel because they knew it was too late. Maybe they just used it as a bargaining chip, the way Microsoft uses the threat of discontinuing Office for the Mac.
It's a shame to see corporate politics get in the way of producing better software. Pink, Rhapsody, Java... all the promises of cross-platform programs have never happened. Consumers should be able to go into a store and buy an application that would work on any platform, but as usual, benefits are skewed in favor of the corporatioins rather than the consumer.
Re:Apple did have an OS for Intel hardware (Score:4, Informative)
No there doesn't. What you see as a conspiracy is actually two companies with different business models.
Apple makes money from selling hardware. This isn't strictly true, they're more of a solutions company than a hardware company, but selling the hardware is where they make their cash. They probably make a bit of cash from their software, but the margin must be small, given the size of their market, and they use their great software to push their hardware. Therefore, it is in Apple's best interest to make their hardware different so no one can run their software on other hardware. That keeps their margins high, and moving to the commodity platform of x86 would mean people would run Apple's low-margin software on low-margin hardware made by others, and Apple's bottom line would take a pounding.
MicroSoft, on the other hand, makes money off software, not hardware. As of 2002 (I don't know about the latest financial report), MicroSoft makes money in three areas: their OS, Office, and the Mac Business Unit. The MacBU is tiny compared to the first two. Therefore, it is in their best interest to write the OS (and per corallary Office) for the commodity hardware, which is x86. Writing for other hardware would increase their overhead, and for what purpose? People who want Windows will get an x86 machine to run it. It's not in MicroSoft's best interest to have to support multiple platforms. Heck, they have a rough time keeping their x86 OS secure and relatively bug-free. So they plug along with x86 until it is no longer the preferred chip.
It's probably more complicated than this, of course; I've heard of agreements and contractual obligations between Apple and IBM/Motorola and MS/Intel that reinforce this seperation, but it is probably more reinforcement than anything.
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)
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.
Use zeroconf to find the router (Score:5, Insightful)
For enterprise wide networks, you zeroconf/rendezvous acquire a DHCP server and a Directory server. From there, they will point you to the rest of the services in your enterprise *outside* of your local network.
Correct multicast switching is not a problem. Do you personally mess with something that intentionally messes up the broadcast address in TCP/IP?
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure they can; they can compete and innovate.
But that's not the way they do things. More likely, they will start by creating their own compatible implementations of Rendezvous until those are incorporated into the OS, and then they'll start subtly breaking compatibility like they tried with kerberos. They'll probably even advertise the new incompatibilities as a great new addon feature to the prot
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Netbios (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:UPNP vs zeroconf/rendezvous (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:4, Insightful)
How so?
Is UPnP adopted by any standards body?
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.
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
That's 6 MONTHS versus 2 WEEKS.
Bryan
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Funny)
Or use it carelessly, and double your karma!
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
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, most of home routers use UPNP. Netgear, linksys, dlink etc.
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast User Switching.
Even Jobs admits MS beat them to it.
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Apple intruding on MS's territory? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, because that one security flaw sure was a bitch.
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:4, Insightful)
Am I confused (most likely) or does that just seem a little silly?
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!
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.
No parent was right, you are wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
- Allocate addresses without a DHCP server.
- Translate between names and IP addresses without a DNS server.
- Find services, like printers, without a directory server.
- Allocate IP Multicast addresses without a MADCAP server.
You are quite accurately describing point 3 whereas the parent was describing points 1,2 and 4. But ALL FOUR are rendezvous/zeroconf.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.
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:3, Insightful)
Speculation...sure. But we're talking about Steve Jobs and hi
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.
Re:This sounds like they are getting ready (Score:3, Informative)
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?
Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
bbh
Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot to initialize Q to a null list...
Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pseudocode for accomplishing this (Score:4, Funny)
Why didn't you write it in obfuscated perl?
Everything working together? (Score:4, Interesting)
-PM
Re:Everything working together? (Score:4, Informative)
iChat can be set to not look for Rendezvous clients, iTunes can be set to not look for playlists (or broadcast them), Safari can be set to not seek other bookmarks, printing can be set to not seek printers, or the whole protocol can be shut down. I personally only use it for iChat at work, and it never gets in the way or is annoying with anything else.
Re:Everything working together? (Score:4, Insightful)
Knowing another service exists is different from being granted the rights to use that service.
Cool. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cool. (Score:5, Informative)
An attempt on a Ruby Rendezvous service... (Score:3, Informative)
Since there are now native service implementations available, it'd probably be better to just hook into those using Ruby/DL [ttsky.net] or some such...
WOW! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is basically how system-linked xboxes work.
It's cute for little networks that consist of an apple, a printer and an ipod, but it doesn't scale well.
I like my dhcp, that I can control based on MAC addresses.
But kudos to Apple for opening this source. They really had to, you know, one thing they desperately have to overcome is the awkwardness of mixing Mac's and PCs on the same network.
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.
Re:WOW! (Score:4, Insightful)
I cant wait for my network to fill with UDP broadcasts!
This is basically how system-linked xboxes work.
It's cute for little networks that consist of an apple, a printer and an ipod, but it doesn't scale well.
Sorry to be blunt - but how the hell do you know how well it scales? Have you read the relevant drafts? I have - and it's actually amazing how much work Cheshire and Krochmal put into making sure it would be extremely scalable. I don't know hard numbers on what the upper limits on subnet size would be, but I was recently at on a LAN with more than 500 Macs connected with no noticeable effect on the network. Sure there's a limit somewhere, but it's way way way above "a Mac and a printer".
I like my dhcp, that I can control based on MAC addresses.
But kudos to Apple for opening this source. They really had to, you know, one thing they desperately have to overcome is the awkwardness of mixing Mac's and PCs on the same network.
The source has been open ever since they started it. All they're doing now is making easily distributed binaries and SDK's available.
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.)
Re:Apple supports Internet Explorer??? (Score:4, Informative)
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2
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.
Re:DNS-SD (Score:4, Informative)
The SD component of Rendezvous doesn't use DNS servers per se. Any machine that has services (and that can be any node on the net) advertises these services using multicast DNS.
mDNS is used both to advertise available machines, and the services on those machines. So, essentially, the service-discovery component of Rendezvous is a decentralized, local-link DNS service -- it even uses the DNS protocol (albeit multicasted).
And for the people who keep bitching about UDP broadcasts: first of all, multicast != broadcast. But more to the point, I haven't found Rendezvous to be particularly chatty; Apple claims in its docs to have gone to lengths to prevent it from spamming the network. (The developer docs include some thinly veiled references to NetBIOS.)
itunes, ichat and p2p (Score:4, Insightful)
It will also be interesting to see how this is applied node discovery in existing p2p systems like gnutella
Re:itunes, ichat and p2p (Score:3, Informative)
The Rendezvous protocol specs have been available for some time (it is, after all, a combination of IETF standards). There are compatible implementations for many platforms; on Linux my favorite has been Howl, but JRendezvous is nice too.
iTunes itself uses a proprietary protocol that Apple keeps changing. Parts of it are well-understood (like the music directory portion) but others are not (like the streaming).
Interestingly, Apple is wil
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.
Re:I should point out... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the history [theideabasket.com] of ZeroConf:
The initial seeds of Zeroconf started in a Macintosh network programmers' mailing list called net-thinkers, back in 1997 when I was still a PhD student at Stanford. We were discussing the poor state of ease-of-use for IP networking, particularly the lack of any equivalent to the old AppleTalk Chooser for browsing for services. I proposed that part of the solution might be simply to layer the existing AppleTalk Name Binding Protocol (NBP) over UDP Multicast.
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!Confusion. (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the really strange part. With SLP, unless you do static configurations, the requests are sent via multi cast. This creates an issue because most routers are not configured to handle multicasting so the SLP scope is limited to the local segment.
Apple's new protocol relies on multicast DNS where, DNS requests are sent via multicast. But, the problem with multicasts being restricted to the local segment still exists. This means that Rendezvous offers no clear advantage over SLP, an already defined and implemented standard. So, why should anyone adopt Rendezvous?
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*.
Re:Confusion. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Some links (Score:4, Informative)
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.
To all the naysayers. (Score:4, Informative)
- This is open
- The *key* feature is the mDNS system.
- Yes, it does automatic IP allocation if there is no DHCP server.. so does Windows (though apple is much faster at it for some reason).
- mDNS is not to be confused with "The global DNS system" that you use to lookup Address records, etc, though it can do that. mDNS is DNS adapted to multicast, for service and host discovery. HOw?
- Instead of querying a DNS server, you query a multicast group (the link-local group in this case) and say "Who has a webserver?" or "who has ssh?" or "hey FOO, what is your IP?" or.. more importantly "Who is a real internet DNS server?" or "Who has an internet gateway?". "Who else is running itunes?".
- a machine joining the network will broadcast once, to send out that it has joined, and what services it has, also via mDNS... so anyone listening can update their caches, etc. The opposite happens when it leaves.
This does not create an extra burden of traffic. Previous to this, most protocols that need to find something in the network do so by rather rude broadcasts.. and usually generate quite a bit of unnecessary traffic.
YES, having a set infrastructure, DNS servers, DHCP, etc, and using DHCP to hardcode everything else, avoiding the need for local network discovery is more efficient. The point is, this works very well WITHOUT any infrastructure.. like 10 guys sitting in a conference room with wireless cards and no servers... or 3 guys on the bus. etc.
NO, rendezvous does not grant ACCESS to your computer.. it merely discovers advertised services... much like an X browser can find a bunch of remote X desktops, or windows TS can find all the terminal servers in the network, or the "network neighborhood" list is populated in windows. It's just a more elegant, scaleable approach.
- mDNS is *not* dns... it is mDNS but if you understand DNS you will understand mDNS. They chose to not make a new protocol, and instead adapt an existing one... which makes it much easier to learn and work with.
it doesn't seem to work? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:La di da (Score:5, Informative)
ZeroConf means a visiting professor walks into a lab at a university and can automatically print. There's zero configuration.
It means an iTunes user can broadcast their library on the network and another iTunes user can pick it up with no problem. There's zero configuration.
It means I can open iChat, not go onto AOL's network, and see my coworkers down the hallway with zero configuration.
It means I can share a workgroup document we are editing in SubEthaEdit [codingmonkeys.de] and easily invite coworkers on the LAN. There's zero configuration
And now it means that non-Mac users can start getting in on a lot of the same stuff.
Bzzzt! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if you are saying that's all that is the same between them, or if that's the only IP range (which isn't even right - it's 169.254.x.y) that they support.
I have Rendezvous working on three different networks of different scales, all of which are using DHCP to allocate addresses in the 10.254.254.x, 192.168.50.x, and 172.18.x.y ranges respectively. I can go to a Mac and try to connect to afp://server.local on any of those networks, and it gives me an authentication dialog.
MDNS and DNS based service discovery are not bound to any IP range, as they are layer 4 services, and IP is layer 3.
Link-local addressing only exists in Rendezvous for when you need it, not for a requirement.
Re:how does this differ from current projects... (Score:3, Interesting)
Rendezvous, like HOWL, is an implementation of Zeroconf.
This sounds allot like apple's dashboard, and how it's a direct rip of Konfabulator!
FYI, Rendezvous was released to the public July 17, 2002, almost a year before HOWL (June 10, 2003). Apple released it open source, so it's not surpising that they now have released cross-platform implementations.
Re:Umm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:P2P and Rendezvous (Score:5, Insightful)