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Rendezvous Developer Stuart Cheshire Interviewed

Posted by pudge on from the i-just-want-rendezvous-enabled-bolo dept.

overunderunderdone writes "Found this interview of Stuart Cheshire, the Apple employee who developed Rendezvous (a.k.a. Zeroconf) and co-chairs the ZEROCONF working group. He provides some interesting history behind Zeroconf. But I thought his ideas for the future of Rendezvous was more interesting. He envisions a single protocol for everything from the keyboard, hard disk, peripherals, to the net connection -- just one kind of socket in the back of your box."

2 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. single protocol?? WHAT?? by foobar104 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm amazed by how many posts there are talking about single-protocol-this and single-protocol-that. My favorites are the ones talking about how having a single protocol leads to licensing fees and restrictions, and the one about how a single protocol is insecure.

    Didn't you losers even read the article? Rendezvous is basically two things: self-assigned link-local IP addressing, and automatic service discovery. In other words, you computer can automatically assign a local IP address to itself, then discover services available on other computers via particular UDP packets. Get two computers in proximity to each other, and they'll be able to ``see'' each other's shared volumes. Get one computer connected (wirelessly or wired-ly) to a printer, and the computer will be able to ``see'' the printer.

    If you ever used Mac OS n (n poof.

    RTFA, indeed.

  2. Universal, hermaphroditic connector by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Hermaphroditic connectors are rarely used. They should be used whenever the application is symmetrical. Twisted-pair serial connections should have been hermaphroditic since their inception. Not only does this resolve the connector gender problem, it resolves the straight-through/crossover cable problem. There's only one kind of cable.

    The problem isn't going away. Ethernet null-modem cables are widely used with DSL modems, providing an unnecessary source of consumer confusion.

    The video production industry gets it. The SMTPE standard connector for fibre-optic broadcast work is hermaphroditic, much to the relief of production crews.

    There ought to be hermaphroditic connectors in USB and RJ11-like form factors, but there aren't.