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Domain: porchdogsoft.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to porchdogsoft.com.
Comments · 10
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Doesn't gtet much simpler than this
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Bonjour for flexibility, Macs for securityThis doesn't come under the heading of cheap, and probably won't help you because you seem to have all your hardware already, but in case somebody has not committed his resources like you have while being in the same situation: Install Macs to get rid of the viruses, and use Apple's Bonjour to have the computers configure themselves on the fly. I had the chance to build a Mac-only system recently, and have come away a rabid fan of zero configuration technology. Windows support of this stuff is sketchy (they have their own format, of course), while Linux has the Avahi-project making big strides. There is also Howl for Linux, but it doesn't seem to be GPL like Avahi.
The cool thing about all of this is that you just configure the routers/base stations and then the machines do the rest themselves wherever you plug them in (for Macs at least, Avahi needs a bit more work, and is still masked with Gentoo 2005.1). Then, when people start moving stuff around, it still configures itself. No more discussions about where the printer goes...just unplug the damn thing and move it where you want it.
Beautiful. Another thing that Apple has done right, Microsoft doesn't get and Linux needs to work on more.
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Re:Okay
> And what about Linux?
http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/ -
Howl
Seems to me that this technology has been available on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD for quite some time now in the form of Howl. It's an opensource library that supports Rendezvous/Zero Conf. I've used it for a while now to do all sorts of fun stuff. In fact, the responder portion of it even runs on the WRT54G boxes.
The only difference here is that this is the blessed client by Apple. -
Re:Okay
Wait a second, what about Howl?
I thought it was the current *NIX implementation... -
Re:Any OpenTalk/ZeroConf servers for *NIX?
Howl is an implementation of ZeroConf (including MDNS-SD and IP self-assigning) that works on Mac, Linux and Windows. It currently includes some APSL code, but the author plans on removing that in the near future. (Then it will be under a BSD-like license)
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Re:Any OpenTalk/ZeroConf servers for *NIX?
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Rendezvous for Pocket PCs
We've launched this only a few weeks ago: Pocketster. It contains an implementation of Rendezvous for the Pocket PC and it also gives you wireless filesharing capabilities (we have a new version coming out on July 6th). It's free, so give it a try if you want (that is if you have a Pocket PC). Also, you might want to check JmDNS (Java version of Rendezvous) and Howl for a Windows implementation. Razvan
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Re:mDNS & Rendezvous?
It's more than that. I haven't yet seen the potential of mDNS revealed anywhay but take this example:
postgres is compiled with mDNS support, when the daemon starts it registers onto the server's mDNSResponder. You launch your data analisys app that broadcasts the query:_pgsql._tcp.local. and your server responds with netaddr/port. The app establishes the connection, you move on. This stuff IS cool. Linux efforts today are limited to tmdns that requires the server admin to manually edit a config file... shure, init scripts can do this but the idea is that you link to a lib that registers the app to the responder autonomously... howl does that. It's soo cool that I break up in tears thinking back at the time I've wasted on this stuff. If only iptables had a programmatic interface to open ports rather than handcrafting config scripts your little daemon config file would be the central repository for all relevant service information... hmm, a datacenter admin's wet dream -
Re:Obligatory Opera comment
Sharing bookmarks on a LAN is both great and troublesome. How do you implement this easily and quickly in a Windows environment without Rendezvous?
That's easy. Port it.