Apple Releases Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3

MacDailyNews is reporting that Apple has released Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3. From the article: "Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers."

Comments

Gosh

[amazon10x]

I didn't know anyone still used Windows 1.0

Re:Gosh

[ciroknight]

That joke seems oddly.. familiar

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps they meant windows 3.1

Re:Gosh

[mctk]

Fewer security risks! /troll

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know it was out of beta yet.

Re:Gosh

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know that Windows 1.0 had networking!

Re:Gosh

[IAmTheDave]

Most people use Windows 1.0.2 Poodle. I personally have a box running Windows 1.0.1 Mexican Hairless, but very few people still run Windows 1.0 Terrior. I'm personally looking forward to the release of Windows 1.0.4 Basset Hound.

Re:Gosh

[tverbeek]

Most people I know have upgraded to Windows 1.04. That's the version that supports the new IBM PS/2s, after all.

Re:Gosh

[filesiteguy]

I sold a copy of it - in the original box - for over $100 on Ebay. I hope I didn't violate the EULA. =O

Amazing that the thing still was able to load. Didn't do much, though....come to think of it Windows still doesn't do much.

Re:Gosh

[Ohreally_factor]

If you upgrade from Mexican Hairless, the terriers have already won.

Re:Gosh

[lubricated]

He didn't say terrier, he said terroir
damn French.

Re:Gosh

[IAmTheDave]

He didn't say terrier, he said terroir

Check the sig. I meant the first. Stoopid spelling.

Re:Gosh

[lubricated]

woosh.

Windows 1?

[jason ward]

That's so 1980's.

Windows 1.0.3?

[nsanders]

Doesn't Apple know that Windows 1.x is 20 years old?

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[redletterrocko]

Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3 requires Windows 2000/2003 or Windows XP. Make sure you have the latest Service Pack installed for your computer using Windows Update.

The title is taken out of context. The program is called "Bonjour for Windows" and the version is 1.0.3

As far as the product, hasn't Microsoft, Novell, and an ungodly amount of other smaller companies tried to do this before? Has anyone used Bonjour? What's network traffic like? ActiveDirectory and Novell are both rather chatty applications when it comes to the network. If we can find a way to keep things quiet, this is a great idea. However, there's the challenge.

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you fucking kidding? Mac users have been using this without even knowing it for over four years. They don't have to know about it because it just works. Go home, pop your PowerBook open, Command-P, and bam, document comes out of your home printer. Go to school or the office, hit Command-P, and you can choose from a human-readable list of every printer available to you. No configuration, no wizards. It's less chatty than Windows' so-called Simple Service Discovery Protocol, and more importantly, it actually functions.

You Windows and Linux users are so cute, still living in the '90s, so accustomed to mediocrity. "Has anyone used Bonjour" indeed.

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tivo uses it. Works perfectly and it's not "chatty" at all...

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gratified as I am that my little rant above got modded up to +3 Informative, I don't really think it represents the best of the Mac community. The truth is, we Mac users feel deep pity for those to whom Rendezvous/Bonjour (ZeroConf by any other name) seems like some kind of magical future technology. No one deserves to be trapped in the configuration hell that is Windows or Linux. Even worse is that you people have come to expect such utter user-unfriendliness, and so you sneer at those whose work would improve your lives. You are the most pathetic of them all, and we Mac users shed a collective tear in sympathy for you.

Therefore, please mod my above comment down to troll where it belongs.

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have used Bonjour (formally known as Rondezvous) and it is great. The simpliest and most useful application we us it for is printers. I can plug my computer onto any of the 32 subnets on my network and immedieatly print to any printer on the network without having to configure or install anything. Compare the two network printing experiences in a workgroup environment.

1. Windows way
plug computer into network
go to printers and faxes - add printer
wonder around building looking for closest printer
grab IP information off printer in building
go back to computer
create "local printer" printer port
find printer drivers
finnish the createing the printer using the wizard (and found drivers) and tie it to created printer port
open word document
hit print
print

2. Mac way (Using Bonjour)
plug computer into network
open word document
hit print (it will now list all printers on network)
select closest printer
print

There are many other examples from iChat (auto-populate all iChat users on lan) to iTunes (can share all songs every iTunes user on lan has with no configuration they just appear)

BEST of all to get it working you need two things -
one enable Bonjour(rondezvous) on networked printers (a matter of selecting enable)
two enable Bonjour on client computer (a matter of checking a box which is on by default)

Re:Windows 1.0.3?

[bhtooefr]

Myself, I use Access Connections.

Some slight manual configuration necessary, but it's all automatic and VERY smooth after that. Autodetects which network I'm on, sets default printers as necessary, etc., etc.

How is this different than...

[amazon10x]

How is this any different than the Wireless Zero configuration that comes with Windows XP? It seems that they all offer the same thing except the Windows Wireless Zero is already on the machine.

Re:How is this different than...

[mysqlrocks]

You could always Google "Bonjour" and find this link:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bonjour/

Bonjour is more than just wireless and DHCP. It automatically discovers and configures printers and other network devices without even needing to use a wizard.

Re:How is this different than...

[Rosyna]

Bonjour allows arbitrary clients to discover arbitrary services they can "subscribe" to. Like iTunes looks for other programs that offer the iTunes service via Bonjour. Or iChat allows you to talk to any other user on the same network via Bonjour. or iPhoto allows you to see other photo albums on the network. The TiVo also uses to automatically discover music, pictures being shared from desktop clients. None of it requires you know about the host offering the service beforehand. ZeroConf is just one aspect of it.

Xcode uses it to discover which clients on a network it can distribute complies to to speed up the horribly slow GCC.

Re:How is this different than...

[Lussarn]

How is this any different than the Wireless Zero configuration that comes with Windows XP

• This will install quicktime for you.
• This will install iTunes for you.
• This will start up 5 needless background processes.
• This will nag you all the time to buy the full version
• This will look like an Mac app.
• This will try to sell you stuff from Apple.
• This will take up all your ram
• This will contain some light form of spyware.

To sum it up, there are some small differences.

Re:How is this different than...

[Ohreally_factor]

I fear you're going to get marked down as flamebait, but that was pretty funny, not to mention apt.

Missing from the list:

This will cause you to grow a goatee.

This will cause an incredible thirst for lattes and koolaid.

Re:How is this different than...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Xcode uses it to discover which clients on a network it can distribute
> complies to to speed up the horribly slow GCC.

Guh... what!?! I can't say that I know the first thing about Xcode, but
how is automatically distributing your compiles to anonymous, unauthenticated
hosts possibly considered a Good Thing?

You say you've audited every last line of your code, and have verified that
there are no security holes? Here, let me just set up a node on the network
that will automatically insert a trojan into anything you ask me to compile.

Re:How is this different than...

[Rosyna]

Notice how I didn't say it uses it to blindly distribute it. It only does it to the computers you explicitly specify. And computers can only become nodes if they are specifically set up to do so.

Remember what they say about people that assume things, it makes you look like a troll.

Re:How is this different than...

[MyDixieWrecked]

Bonjour is also more than just named machines on a CIFS/samba network, too.

for those that don't know, bonjour enables a machine to not only broadcast a DNS name for itself ("hey everyone, I'm alberto.local!), but it also the services it offers ("hey, I do ftp, http, and jabber!").

When it first became available I was pretty vocal about how I could get the same thing done with host files... but as I've gotten older and the number of machines on my network have grown, it's become a lot easier to access the OSX machines without needing to know their IPs, and configuring the host files of my 4 linux servers is a pain in the ASS.

This is also available for linux, but I haven't gotten it working properly (or really tried, for that matter). I believe the packages are called Howl and mdnsResponder.

Re:How is this different than...

[MoFoQ]

"OOOO...YEA!!"

• Plus it's not susceptible to any future anti-trust settlements too as it's not a part of the OS.
• It doesn't come with a pitchfork to go with that goatie.

Re:How is this different than...

[CerebusUS]

I believe SuSE supports Bonjour out of the box, but it's been quite awhile since I made that discovery. The backstory is kind of fun, though.

We had a less-than-clueful consultancy come in to help us do an Active Directory installation on top of our NT4 domain. They suggested we use .local as the TLD for the AD domain. Wow, was that a mistake. All the macs on the network needed a user-created patch to enable .local DNS requests to pass through to an actual DNS server. I discovered the SuSE (at least I _think_ it was SuSE) "feature" when I tried to set up a box for play.

Re:How is this different than...

[Kelson]

This will cause an incredible thirst for lattes and koolaid.

Or even koolaid lattes.

Re:How is this different than...

[Yaztromo]

How is this any different than the Wireless Zero configuration that comes with Windows XP? It seems that they all offer the same thing except the Windows Wireless Zero is already on the machine.

It is completely different. Wireless Zero Configuration on Windows is a serviced used to connect your machine to 802.11 wireless networks, and (apparantly) to 802.1X network authorization systems.

Bonjour is a completely different animal, that is more of a combination of a decentralized DNS, and a way for machines to say "hey, heere are the services I offer that you can use" to any other machines on the network. Each machine running a full Bonjour/ZeroConf installation will advertise its name on the network, and the network services it provides. A system might, for example, advertise that it offers SSH, HTTP, FTP, AFP, Samba, and printing services. A client machine running Bonjour/ZeroConf that connects to this network will automatically know about these other services on the network, and can thus offer them as connection options to the user as is approperiate.

For example, say you take your laptop to the airport. You open it up, and get a wireless connection through Windows as usual. You fire up your web browser, and in a special bookmark menu you automatically see the links for arrivals, departures, and general airport information.

Or you walk into an office you are visiting, and need to print off a document. You open up the document, select Print, and find in the print dialog that your system has already found all available printers on your subnet.

You hit the cafe, and decide to fire up your favorite music application to listen to some tunes. Other people are there doing the same thing, and your system finds their playlists, and lets you browser through them and play them on your own laptop.

These are the sorts of things that Bonjour/ZeroConf permit. It's like a distributed DNS, where each machine only needs to know about itself, and the resolution database gets built dynamically. But it goes one step further to describe not just the hosts, but the public services those hosts offer.

I run Bonjour a lot on my networks. I do have a few Macs, but most of the systems I'm running it on are Linux systems. A client that connects to my personal network (something which is of course restricted by both WPA2 and a MAC filter list) will learn about all of the services they have public access to, including a few print gateways, digital audio streaming services, network sharing services, multimedia sharing services, chat services, and a variety of others. Suitably enabled client applications will know about these systems automatically, and can then build the relevent on screen menus or selection dialogs or whatnot to permit connecting to these services. And for a significantly large network size, it is significantly easier for an administrator to configure one printer to use Bonjour/ZeroConf than it is to have to tell potentially hundreds of clients where the printer is on the network.

Yaz.

Re:How is this different than...

[Kelson]

This is also available for linux, but I haven't gotten it working properly (or really tried, for that matter). I believe the packages are called Howl and mdnsResponder.

I have a Fedora Core 4 system that advertises Netatalk shares and HTTP via mDNSresponder. Fedora 5 has dropped Howl in favor of Avahi -- another zeroconf implementation -- though I haven't done anything with it yet.

Re:How is this different than...

[amliebsch]

It automatically discovers and configures printers and other network devices without even needing to use a wizard.

Windows does that too, just FYI.

Re:How is this different than...

[JamesTRexx]

So the difference with Windows is that it only installs a light form of spyware?

Re:How is this different than...

[nuckin futs]

i don't know how windows does zero conf, but every time i plug a device, it always runs the stupid wizard and wants to install drivers. i expect zero configuration to be just that...zero user intervention.

Re:How is this different than...

[uradu]

One service I would love would be a hack to SMB to bypass the idiotic Master Browser peer discovery mechanism in Windows workgroups so it can use ZeroConf instead. In a domain-less Windows network browsing across machines is always a PITA, especially for machines with intermittend connectivity (i.e. notebooks). Alternatively, a complete replacement of SMB that dropped in neatly into Windows Explorer would work too.

Re:How is this different than...

[jabuzz]

And a right pain in the neck on a corporate (or lets just say large) network. Ever tried to set up a printer using "Bonjour" on a Mac when it finds a dozen printers of the same model!!! So which one is the one sitting on the desk next to me then? Never mind that the DHCP servers are giving it a static IP address and it has a hostname that resolves correctly. Oh no you cannot possibly just stick that it, you have to guess which one it is, or realize that the the string of seemingly random numbers after it is the MAC address of the printer!!!

Sorry but setting up network printers on a corporate style network is way easier without any "Bonjour" rubbish getting in the way.

Re:How is this different than...

[dwightk]

Bonjour is more than wireless...

Re:How is this different than...

[Naurgrim]

consultancy come in to help us do an Active Directory installation on top of our NT4 domain. They suggested we use .local as the TLD for the AD domain

And they were absolutely right to do so, I would'a done the same. Setting your AD domain to "my-internet-domain.com" screws the pooch on all kinds of things in AD.

All the macs on the network needed a user-created patch to enable .local DNS requests to pass through to an actual DNS server

You mean DNS out in the internets? Point the macs at the AD-PDC.

Re:How is this different than...

[thegrassyknowl]

That would be nice. I love it when I watch Windows boxes on my network try and force themselves to be the master browser. What sucks is that I don't control those boxes and the people who do control them won't let me get in and hack the registry to lower their priority.

It becomes a PITA because every time some shit-box XP install comes up it forces an election, sometimes it wins, and the browse list disappears. It takes forever for the browse list to be repopulated with so many client machines on the network.

Good thing I don't use Windows file shares for anything!

Re:How is this different than...

[mrchaotica]

And that's why you're supposed to fill in the "location" field when you use CUPS to share the printer (presumably other protocols have a similar thing).

Re:How is this different than...

[value_added]

One service I would love would be a hack to SMB to bypass the idiotic Master Browser peer discovery mechanism in Windows workgroups so it can use ZeroConf instead.

If you're dancing the Samba, you can use the "Preferred Master = Yes" directive in smb.conf to do this. Works like a charm.

Re:How is this different than...

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is completely different from UPnP discovery.

Re:How is this different than...

[amliebsch]

It does that only if it needs to locate the drivers - obviously it can't automatically install devices for which drivers are non-existent. Things for which it already has does have drivers, like mass storage devices and known printers, automagically appear. Available network resources also automagically show up under Printers or My Network Places with no user intervention.

Re:How is this different than...

[bill_mcgonigle]

For those following along at home, this gets you most of what AppleTalk Phase I did c. 86, but over IP rather than DDP.

Actually, if you count the hidden Wide-Area Bojour stuff you're up to '89.

AppleTalk, we missed 'ya.

Re:How is this different than...

[Midnight Thunder]

Next time .internal would be a good alternative.

Re:How is this different than...

[macshome]

.local is pretty easy to handle on the Macs now. On 10.3 you had to make a custom resolve.conf file. On Tiger though you just set your .local domain as the first search domain in the network prefs. Done.

Re:How is this different than...

[amper]

No, they were absolutely *wrong* to do so.

I myself am in the process of replacing one of these poor design decisions with a brand new AD in a company that is about 50% Mac OS X and 50% Windows 2K/XP/2K3. The arrogant asshats who built the original AD never consulted with the people responsible for over half the computers in the company that run Mac OS X. Not to mention the fact that just about every networkable printer that's come out in the past couple of years supports mDNS/Rendezvous/Bonjour/Zeroconf right out of the box, and will also have problems with using a ".local" AD.

It's interesting that you claim the usage of ".com" addresses for AD causes problems, especially since the ".com" root DN convention is not only recommended by Microsoft, but has been in common usage for LDAP directories for quite a bit longer than Active Directory has been available on the market.

Pointing the Macs at the AD's DNS system doesn't solve the problem, because mDNS assumes that anything ".local" will be found through the Multicast DNS system (at least, prior to 10.3.4), so the ".local" request never makes it to the specified AD server's DNS. Apple had to go out of their way to work around the problem because of so many MCSE asshats who don't know an fscking thing about interoperability...which is to say, most of them.

Re:How is this different than...

[drachenstern]

what! I have to do something? It won't do it for me? Can't you just come over to my enterprise network and set it up for me since we both read slashdot.

I can't be bothered to spend an extra .7 seconds typing my name in that field, or even my office number, or my telephone number or something like that, that would require an additional .2 seconds of thought

sheesh, you insensitive clod

Re:How is this different than...

[drachenstern]

no no no, it takes up all your ram

Re:How is this different than...

[aztracker1]

I've usually favored using either company.lan or inside.company.com ... depending on the deployment myself... I always avoid using .local for anything besides a single machine's self-loocup.. that's just me though..

and I'm not an MCSE, or much of an admin for that matter, more of a coder.. but have had to work around enough garbage over the years.

Re:How is this different than...

[badfish99]

Your description of the problem makes it sound like Apple were treating the .local domain differently from any other domain name. Unless that behaviour is mandated by the DNS RFCs, it's just a bug in OSX.
Not knowing about bugs in OSX might be ignorance, but it's surely not arrogance.

Re:How is this different than...

[Squozen]

For a printer connected to a computer that is sharing it on the LAN, I would agree with you, but Windows does NOT handle zeroconf by default in my experience. Windows couldn't find my laser printer (with its own network card installed) automatically. The Macs in the house found it immediately, but I needed to determine the printer's IP and add it manually to my XP box.

Re:How is this different than...

[amper]

Wrong again. It's not a "bug in Mac OS X", it's simply the way Multicast DNS works.

Now, while I admit that Zeroconf/Bonjour/mDNS/what have you is a relatively recent innovation, the installation I am dealing with was performed after the introduction of Mac OS X 10.2 (August 2002). In a company where at least 50% of the machines are Macs, it is imperative that the two platforms interoperate. Unfortunately, most Microsoft-centric so-called "consultants" and "systems engineers" (certified or no) have absolutely no knowledge of anything outside their limited purview, and don't care.

Now, while the usage of ".local" for the AD could have been excused had the system been built prior to 2002, this is not the case in many situations, my own included, and such a naming convention should now be considered a deprecated practice.

As far as RFCs are concerned, anybody who understands anything about the RFC system ought to know that no protocol RFC is worth the paper it's written on without a reference implementation. In this case, Zeroconf's reference implementation is Apple's Bonjour (the protocol formerly known as Rendezvous). Microsoft representatives are part of the IETF Zeroconf working group. It *will* be a standard, eventually. Don't get too worked up about the existence/lack thereof of Zeroconf RFC's. Working code is more important, as are defacto standards. After all, many, if not most, of the "standard" protocols have taken years and years to reach "IETF Draft Standard" or "IETF Standard" status, if they ever did so at all.

Re:How is this different than...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, most obviously, it also works on wired networks.

Re:How is this different than...

[nsayer]

No. These are Ethernet equipped printers that broadcast their own IP with Bonjour.

I would argue, however, that in an enterprise setting where there is a danger of more than one printer of the same model on the same subnet, your admins should be configuring them not to have the default name.

Either that, or they would disable bonjour come over and configure your printer to use the print server so that jobs will spool and be printed in order rather than having two computers that want to print at the same time having to rochambeaux for it.

Bonjour isn't an Enterprise tool. It's a SOHO / home / public LAN sort of tool.

Re:How is this different than...

[mrchaotica]

use the print server so that jobs will spool and be printed in order rather than having two computers that want to print at the same time having to rochambeaux for it.

What do you mean? Don't network printers have print servers built-in, so that the jobs will just spool and queue at the printer? (also, what does "rochambeaux" mean?)

Re:How is this different than...

[nsayer]

Don't network printers have print servers built-in

They do have print servers, by definition, but they typically do not spool jobs and print them in order. They typically take in a job and reject any others until it finishes the first one. Unless they are particularly expensive ones that come with hard drives and the like.

also, what does "rochambeaux" mean?

Turns out I spelled it wrong. It's roshambo, sometimes known as 'rock, paper, scissors." Alternately (and more humorously), it references South Park where Cartman explains that it's a game where two opponents kick each other in the nuts until one of them gives up. In both senses, for the purpose of this discussion, it represents an arbitration game.

Re:How is this different than...

[badfish99]

Wrong again
Again? I must try harder.

it's simply the way Multicast DNS works
So Multicast DNS breaks regular DNS. Still smells like a bug to me. The original post said "at least, prior to 10.3.4", which sounds to me like Apple discovered it was broken, and fixed it.

Unfortunately, most Microsoft-centric so-called "consultants" and "systems engineers" (certified or no) have absolutely no knowledge of anything outside their limited purview, and don't care.
They don't need to: they're making a good living without caring about Apple. If you wanted Apple expertise, you should have paid extra for it. Neither knowing nor caring about Apple does not make you an "arrogant asshat".

Working code is more important, as are defacto standards.
Good point. I'll remember it the next time anyone complains about Microsoft's implementation of LDAP or CSS or Kerberos or whatever being broken.

Re:How is this different than...

[iKillCellphones]

For example, say you take your laptop to the airport. You open it up, and get a wireless connection through Windows as usual. You fire up your web browser, and in a special bookmark menu you automatically see the links for arrivals, departures, and general airport information.

Pardon? If by the "special bookmark menu" you mean the Bonjour "plugin" for IE, then you would only discover such services if they were web servers running somewhere in your bonjourhood.

How is this better than simply accessing these infomational pages via a bog-standard url? Don't get me wrong, Bonjour is nice, but apart from the convenience of zero-config printing I don't see the attraction. I can already share my iTunes library across my network without installing additional software (additional to iTunes) on my Windows boxes. The "file sharing" aspect of Bonjour escapes me completely, when my "little config" system - Mac personal file sharing, and Windows file sharing - achieves exactly what I need. Bonjour doesn't appear to simplify any part of that particular process.

Re:How is this different than...

[Yaztromo]

Pardon? If by the "special bookmark menu" you mean the Bonjour "plugin" for IE, then you would only discover such services if they were web servers running somewhere in your bonjourhood.

Which is all wel and good if you're intimately familiar with your "bonjourhood". However, take a look again at my example of the airport. It is entirely possible (and, in fact, probable) that the airport is going to have more than one webserver. The airport authority might have one for general airport information, arrivals, and departures. The individual airlines which service that airport may each have their own which permit online check-in (something I actually use frequently), and booking flights. Car rental companies that function within the airport may have their own server to advertise and provide sign-up for their own services, as may the shops. Customs may also have their own server (fairly likely due to government privacy and security laws in most jurisdictions).

All of these individual servers and services can be advertised via Bonjour. You walk into an airport you've never set foot inside, open up your laptop, and presto -- bookmarks to all of these services are immediately available to you (and technically no , I wasn't talking about the IE plug-in, I was thinking of the bookmark menu in Safari, but hey, 2**4 of one and 4**2 of the other I suppose).

And even if they were all running on the same server, you can still advertise them seperately. Each Bonjour service entry permits one or more text records, and HTTP records in specific (_http._tcp) have a "path" TXT record entry which denotes the path into the web server for the specific entry. So you can also have multiple entries per server. And you (as an end-user) don't need to know the URLs to any of these servers beforehand -- your web browser can build them for you based on what it finds within the local subnet (or beyond).

I can already share my iTunes library across my network without installing additional software (additional to iTunes) on my Windows boxes.

That's because iTunes on Windows has Bonjour built right into its executable. This additional code for Windows from Apple is to activate Bonjour functionality into applications it doesn't directly control itself. So you're already using Bonjour for a very useful purpose.

Bonjour is immensely useful. A little imagination shows a plethora of uses. I use it within the lab and my home for all sorts of service advertisement. It shows itself as vastly more useful when you use it with an OS which supports it at a low level, like Mac OS X or Linux. With it, small networks don't need to run their own DNS at all. Devices and services can be found automatically, and what services are advertised are up to each and every individual machine, and don't require the authorization or activation by some central authority.

Yaz.

Hello

[mysqlrocks]

Let me be the first to say, "Hello" to our new, uh, wait, never-mind... (ducks)

Re:Hello

[Solra Bizna]

New ducks?

-:sigma.SB

I bet network engineers

[EraserMouseMan]

are clamoring to get their hands on this. Seriosly though, why do I need this product? We already have wireless routers with built-in DHCP. And network neighborhood knows about computers on the network.

Re:I bet network engineers

[truthsearch]

My mac finds network printers with no delay at all and gets the appropriate drivers as needed (the Windows equivalent has sucked ever since they introduced it and it's specific to printers).

My co-workers' iTunes libraries show up instantly for me to play on my own mac.

iChat with no central server

There are others, but the point is that they all work over the same protocol. No specific network programming is required as long as a device is Bonjour-enabled. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread but it makes networking easier. With Windows Microsoft prefers to program each device type separately.

Re:I bet network engineers

[aldheorte]

There's a difference between computers and services in a distributed environment (network). DHCP operates at a lower level to get individual computers into the environment with an addressable endpoint (IP address). Computer names provide a poor form of 'fixed' DNS for addressing of packets inside the environment from one machine to the other, commonly used for such things as file sharing when you know you need to connect to the named file server and a particular share on it.

Services, on the other hand, could exist on any of the computers and Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) and other service discovery protocols (such as used in Jini) work at this level, looking for particular services without a care of what computer on which they run, or if they changed from one computer to another because that computer got taken offline and replaced by another one. Services could include an iTunes broadcast stream, an iChat presence, or a service that, when called via a program, can return the expected weight of x pairs of jeans, for a totally inane example.

In the iChat example, if you had a coworker moving between machines, you wouldn't know which one to message just by computer name (such as that Messaging Service that Windows NT has where you can send a message to another machine by machine name and it comes up in a dialog window). With Bonjour, wherever your coworker logged in, your iChat would find his identity as a service and know to route your iChats messages to him at his current machine.

Re:I bet network engineers

[ktappe]

why do I need this product? We already have wireless routers with built-in DHCP

This isn't the same thing as DHCP. DHCP hands out IP addresses on a lease basis. Bonjour is a discovery protocol that lets users easily find peripherals without needing to know their addresses. Under Windows without Bonjour (ZeroConf) you still have to manually type in the addresses of IP-based printers whereas Macs with Bonjour find those same devices automatically. It's actually pretty sweet technology that brings to the IP era what AppleTalk supplied back in the late 80's to Macs. And it's peer-to-peer so you don't need any other services (AD, LDAP) providing lookup for you; it's plug & play and it simply works.

-Kurt

Re:I bet network engineers

[NutscrapeSucks]

The Windows version (NBT) is not specific to printers. However, you're more likely to see it in use for finding SQL Servers than for chat programs.

Re:I bet network engineers

[rnelsonee]

And network neighborhood knows about computers on the network.

You haven't used Bonjour, have you? That shit can find computers not on the network. And let you use those printers and other application data. Automatically.

(and I'm not kidding. When my neighbor's daughter launches iTunes, her library shows up in my iTunes, and I can play them. Note that my network is WEP-enabled and MAC filtered, and I'm not part of her network).

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

My mac finds network printers with no delay at all and gets the appropriate drivers as needed (the Windows equivalent has sucked ever since they introduced it and it's specific to printers).

Maybe I don't want your computer to find network printers, because there are lots of them and I want to decide for you which printer to use. I want to prevent helpdesk calls where the idiot user keeps printing to the printer in the next office because they can't find their printout. I don't want you to print direct to the printer, since you're not allowed to - only the print server can print to the network printers. You have to print to the print server for logging & accounting.

And frankly, the windows equivalent is pretty easy. Just type "\\servername\printername" and the print queue is opened & the drivers are installed for you from the print server if you don't have them. You can quietly put it in the login script with "rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /c\\servername /n\\servername\printername /q". You can also set the default printer with the /y switch.

My co-workers' iTunes libraries show up instantly for me to play on my own mac.

While that's handy, not many businesses encourage that sort of thing during office hours.

Re:I bet network engineers

[Mikey-San]

When my neighbor's daughter launches iTunes, her library shows up in my iTunes, and I can play them. Note that my network is WEP-enabled and MAC filtered, and I'm not part of her network

You might be WEP-enabled and MAC-filtered, but that doesn't mean you aren't on the same network. (WEP and MAC filtering have nothing to do with Bonjour services specifically.) Bonjour works on a subnet, not over a WAN; getting it to work across separate subnets requires special configuration.

You two are on the same network.

Re:I bet network engineers

[RJabelman]

And frankly, the windows equivalent is pretty easy. Just type "\\servername\printername" and the print queue is opened & the drivers are installed for you from the print server if you don't have them. You can quietly put it in the login script with "rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /c\\servername /n\\servername\printername /q". You can also set the default printer with the /y switch.

Yes, that's much easier than choosing the printer you want from a list of those available to you.

Re:I bet network engineers

[rduke15]

you wouldn't know which one to message just by computer name (such as that Messaging Service that Windows NT has where you can send a message to another machine by machine name and it comes up in a dialog window)

Not really the best example, since you can also use the login name with the Windows messaging protocol, and it pops up on any or every machine on which that user is logged in. Or you can use the workgroup/domain name, and it pops un on every machine.

(Used to be a handy simple tool in LANs, until spammers found they could use it to spam boxes directly connected to the net, and MS stupidly disabled it in some Service Pack. You can re-enable it, but when you send "Going down for maintenance in 5 minutes" on the LAN, there are always some machines on which it hasn't been re-enabled, or has been re-disabled).

Re:I bet network engineers

[moonbender]

It really is fairly simple. The user would only do the \\servername\printername thing, I know, because I've been on the user side in the past. Don't get me wrong, there was also a list, but opening that up and selecting the right one from the 40 available printers was slower than just entering the name I had memorised. (The servername is the same for all printers, incidently, I essentially had to remember a number that was also on a label on the printer...)

I wrote this because I was pleasently surprised how straightforward it is. The driver is silently installed on first access, you never have to screw around with it - it just works!

Re:I bet network engineers

[soft_guy]

It is needed if you want to dynamically discover something (or be discovered) on your network using Bonjour.

Re:I bet network engineers

[soft_guy]

There is a wide area version of Bonjour.

Re:I bet network engineers

[teh*fink]

on a related note, one of the other cool examples of bonjour is being able to be on a wired network and browse itunes shares using your wireless card (or vice versa, etc.)

Re:I bet network engineers

[soft_guy]

Uh. No. They don't. In fact, I recently talked to Microsoft about their ZeroConf story. Right now they are saying that Universal Plug and Play will be replaced by a Web Services - Discovery thing that is coming out with Vista.

So, right now, you are better off building Bonjour into your products. You can negnotiate a license to distribute Bonjour with your app from Apple.

Re:I bet network engineers

[truthsearch]

The driver is silently installed on first access, you never have to screw around with it - it just works!

Never in my experience. It usually installed a version from the wrong version of Windows. It would regularly crash my workstation by installing a driver for 2000 on XP.

Re:I bet network engineers

[EraserMouseMan]

I hope the "Web Services - Discovery thing" that comes with Vista will be free. No negotiating licenses needed.

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

In the iChat example, if you had a coworker moving between machines, you wouldn't know which one to message just by computer name (such as that Messaging Service that Windows NT has where you can send a message to another machine by machine name and it comes up in a dialog window).

Not that I'm a big fan of windows messaging, you can send messages to a user the same way you send a message to a machine. If you send to a user, the message will get to them regardless of where they are logged in.

Re:I bet network engineers

[moonbender]

Well, nearly all PCs in that office were still running 2000, I guess now I know why. ;)

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

did you miss the "getting it to work across separate subnets requires special configuration." part?

typical slashdot....

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

No specific network programming is required as long as a device is Bonjour-enabled.

Bonjour only handles discovery. You still have to understand the specific network protocol the resource speaks to use it.

Re:I bet network engineers

[mindstormpt]

Maybe your experience is not that rare, but I've used several networked printers with several versions of windows (including XP) and never had any problems. As usual, it's a matter of luck.

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's much easier than choosing the printer you want from a list of those available to you.

The point was that I don't want you to be able to choose, because users often choose wrong when they can choose from a dozen printers. I will choose for you from the login script based on criteria I choose.

Re:I bet network engineers

[mykdavies]

If anyone is still unclear what this means for a user, there's an excellent video of a Google tech talk where Stuart Chesire explains what Bonjour is all about - it's a great example of a technical expert communicating information in a clear and informative manner, and it really explains the vision behind zero-conf -- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-739868010 3951126462&q=Google+techtalks

Re:I bet network engineers

[man_of_mr_e]

sounds like UPNP

Re:I bet network engineers

[batkiwi]

You're confusing enterprise features with SOHO features.

In a large enterprise, you'll have an OSX server doing auth/login management/print serving/etc, just as you would in a windows/AD network.

The difference is, when I bring my laptop over to your house, if you have an airport box with print server, and another mac (or software running bonjour protocol for windows/linux), I will instantly see your printer, file server, ichat client, itunes songs, etc INSTANTLY, without wondering if we're on the same workgroup name/etc.

Yes you can still do it manually and script it, but it's nice to have the easy alternative.

Re:I bet network engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

And frankly, the windows equivalent is pretty easy. Just type "\\servername\printername" and the print queue is opened & the drivers are installed for you from the print server if you don't have them. You can quietly put it in the login script with "rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /in /c\\servername /n\\servername\printername /q". You can also set the default printer with the /y switch.

I hope you're joking.

While that's handy, not many businesses encourage that sort of thing during office hours.

What, listening to music? Where do you work?

Re:I bet network engineers

[amper]

Well, obviously, your neighbor's daughter has decrypted your WEP key and spoofed one of the MAC addresses in your AP's lookup table (or simply added her MAC to the list). Or maybe she added a VPN tunnel to your subnet.

You might want to look into that...

Re:I bet network engineers

[bar-agent]

If you use Bonjour instead, don't bother worrying about it.

Re:I bet network engineers

[rnelsonee]

No, that's the point. Bonjour is able to talk to other computers outside of a LAN. I doubt a 10-year old girl is going around trying to hack my network.

Re:I bet network engineers

[wfberg]

This is a (not particularly well documented) setting on the server that was botched up. If you install a printer driver on the server, you'll usually end up installing the printer driver for the windows server OS *only*. When clients want to use the printer, they'll be presented with the same driver. However, you can add printer drivers for additional operating systems; well, windows OSes. the instructions are here. When a different OS client tries to connect, it's presented with its own driver version, if available. Make sure your friendly BOFH gets that link.

One note; I've found that drivers for different windows versions can behave differently, even if it's the same printer driver version (yes, HP, I'm talking to you). Not only will they have ever so slightly different GUIs (confusing your lusers) but they'll be broken in interesting, and more importantly *different* ways.

To avoid too much heterogenity, I've had most luck using as-generic-as-possible postscript drivers (e.g. the adobe postscript drivers for windows 98/NT, and the built-in postscript driver on 000 and up, with a .ppd file that describes the printers specific options).

You can also just send postscript (or PCL) files to a (ps/pcl) printer using copy /b file.bin \\driver\printername or you can even output postscript directly to \\server\printername\filename.bin - the filename is ignored. Certified Postscript Level 3 printers (HP printers "emulate" PS3!) will even directly print off PDF files just copied to them; it's a native format to them. Quite a bit faster than viewing the PDF in acrobat, then printing it, though you lose options like double sided printing, n-up, etc.

wow

[larry bagina]

from TFA:

Installing Bonjour: Double-click the Bonjour installer and follow the onscreen instructions.

Thanks, I never would have thought of that.

Re:wow

[ArchAngelQ]

You've never worked in tech support, have you?

Re:wow

[ceoyoyo]

They're Mac developers. The idea of requiring an installer is somewhat foreign.

Re:wow

[kchrist]

Keep in mind who these instructions were written for. In my experience, following instructions is a concept foreign to the average Windows user.

Re:so what?

[mtxf]

maybe its because apple are actually releasing this on windows

seems an odd move by apple, surely they could have used this as another reason to switch to mac...

Don't need it

[n6kuy]

I've already said Bonjour to Windows...

Re:Don't need it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean au revoir.

Re:Don't need it

[BecomingLumberg]

If that was meant to be a snide remark, should you not say 'au revoir' to windows?

Re:Don't need it

[FluffyWithTeeth]

I really hope I'm wrong, but please tell me you didn't just translate "bonjour" like I think you did.

Please.

Re:Don't need it

[PDubNYC]

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Good day does not work that way.

au revoir

Re:Don't need it

[n6kuy]

...or maybe I meant Bon Voyage.

I'm not French, dammit!

Re:Don't need it

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can say "bonjour" to end a conversation - it's considered quite polite.

And, yes, i am a Francophone.

Re:Don't need it

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but you're from quebec, right? I know by the way you said "bonjour" to end a conversation. And even here in quebec, it's wrong, it is "bonne journee" which is a wish that the day goes good. bonjour is actually used to start the conversation all over the french world.

Re:Don't need it

[vonsneerderhooten]

Au revoir indicates that you'll be seeing it/them again(soon). Au Dieu indicates a more permanent departure.

Re:Don't need it

[ceoyoyo]

What he meant was he said "Ah, bonjour, mon petit ami. He he he," to Windows. Some people are WAY too friendly with their computers, and with Windows... ick!

Re:Don't need it

[drachenstern]

Okay, while I would have a similar problem if a, say, Mandarin word were used for the title of a program, isn't bonjour rather an intercontinental French word. That is to say, have you never heard that used in all of your Western life? Just curious.

next time tho, maybe babelfish.altavista.com - gotta love the fish

Re:Wild guess...

[dmarcoot]

Wild guess, you never have used it.

This isn't news

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but this isn't news

Anyone who has used an airport express on their network with a windows box has already seen this as part of wireless printer discovery

Bonjour vs UPnP

[Digital Pizza]

How does Bonjour compare to Univeral Plug-n-Play (besides probably being more secure, given UPnP's reputation)?

Is UPnP widely used already, and if so could Bonjour ever gain any traction in the Windows market?

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[minus_273]

most printers support bonjour (i.e. rendezvous v2 ) and all itunes clients and their clones do as well. Limewire and a ton of linux clients use it with DAAP to access itunes shares.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[HardCase]

How does Bonjour compare to Univeral Plug-n-Play (besides probably being more secure, given UPnP's reputation)?

It's much more hip and cool. And it smokes French cigarettes.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[Rosyna]

In Bonjour, application developers describe the service used. For UPnP, The UPnP forum creates the profiles. If a profile doesn't exist, you must wait for the UPnP forum to create it. There appears to be a list of them here.

For example, there does not appear to be a profile for something like iChat (Internet Chat), Xcode (Distributed Computing), or Font Sharing. Yet Bonjour enables both of these since the standards bodies do not limit the services.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[tsm_sf]

And it works.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[Osty]

How does Bonjour compare to Univeral Plug-n-Play (besides probably being more secure, given UPnP's reputation)?

UPnP is insecure because of its reputation? Aside from a little bit of GRC grand-standing, UPnP is perfectly safe (with normal precautions you'd take for anything network-related, of course). Sure, there were a few flaws in Microsoft's implementation of a UPnP IGD (Internet Gateway Device) for use in conjunction with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing, or "NAT" as the rest of us know it), which is something you probably shouldn't use anyway (consumer-grade routers have better connection sharing). Enabling UPnP on your router for use with UPnP-aware applications like Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Azureus, Media Center Extenders, etc, is perfectly safe. If you use a Linux box as a NAT router, you can even install an IGD daemon for Linux (of course, you'll want to make sure it's not broadcasting on your public interface).

Others have mentioned that Rendevous/Bonjour is not a competitor to UPnP. I'm talking about the perceived threat of UPnP, and the unfortunate damage that idiot GRC did five years ago by spouting off about crap he didn't understand.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[soft_guy]

Microsoft is replacing UPNP with a thing called WS-Discovery in Vista. So, lucky you if you used UPNP, you get to rewrite your app!

If you use Bonjour, you just replace the Bonjour library with this new one.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[Anonymous Coward]

Enabling UPnP on your router for use with UPnP-aware applications like Xbox Live, MSN Messenger, Azureus, Media Center Extenders, etc, is perfectly safe.

Sure. Until your kid installs a trojaned game he got from a buddy at school on his PC, and the trojan asks your router to please open some outbound ports that you wanted to keep shut down. Because you can do that with UPnP, without authentication.

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[HardCase]

And it works.

But only 30 hours per week.

I keed, I keed...

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[I Like Pudding]

Who the fuck limits outbound connections on their home network?

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[Corbets]

Come now, that's not fair. Last I heard the French worked 32 hours per week... well, except for some industries where it's 26... oh, and only when they're not busy protesting....

Re:Bonjour vs UPnP

[grand_it]

Is UPnP widely used already, and if so could Bonjour ever gain any traction in the Windows market?

That's the real catch. After years in a coma, UPnP is getting more popular in NAS that can advertise and stream multimedia content to Digital Multimedia Adapters directly connected to Home Theater gear, whithout the need of a controlling PC/media server.

I recently tested Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus with a 37" Acer LCD TVwith integrated media gateway. Just plug the two devices to the same network (or hook them to the same wireless router) and you get on the TV a list of photos, videos and music you have on the hard drive. You can choose the desired content using the remote control - in a Media Center/MythTV-like interface - and enjoy the show.

This kind of technology is likely to receive a big boost after the release of the next version of the Intel's Viiv platform, which will include some media server capabilities, based on Digital Living Network Alliance and Networked Media Product Requirements. Such features should be available without the need of booting Windows XP. That's what will really make Viiv stand out from normal multimedia PCs.

I'm an Apple fanboy, and love Bonjour, but I think that it needs a big push toward non-PC and consumer electronics devices to compete with UPnP and Viiv. Or maybe Apple should try to join the DLNA and steer it toward Bonjour (unlikely).

Re:Wild guess...

[Jaysyn]

Yup, that would be a wild comment.

Jaysyn

Re:so what?

[larry bagina]

It's been available for windows for a while. I have v 1.0.1.2 (march 23, 2005) installed on my computer.

Hey slashdot, I hear Apple will be releasing iTunes 6.0.5 for Windows any day now!!!!

This is the firts step

[denisbergeron]

to replace the bsd kernel by the Windows Kernel !

Re:This is the firts step

[hunterx11]

Ah, but OS X doesn't use a BSD kernel! It uses a Mach kernel--the userland is BSD. You know, programs like ftp, things that are totally different on Windows :)

Umm, wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron. Read about ZeroConf a little bit before you troll, kay?

Re: Umm, wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron. Read about ZeroConf a little bit before you troll, kay?

You're a bigger moron. Rendezvous, ZeroConf, Bonjour, or whatever they are calling it this week, is a useless solution that is looking for a problem and Apple is trying hard to shove it down everyone's throats. It has no purpose beyond pandering to Mac hippies when they congregate at Starbucks. Apple is simply reinventing NetBEUI.

Re: Umm, wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the biggest moron. Apple didnt ("re")invent it. It was an open source project they adopted in the hopes of improving upon--and creating competition for--NetBEUI. OH HOW DARE THEY OFFER IT TO THE WORLD FOR FREE AFTER SPENDING R&D ON IT OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKET! "Damn you goatee-sporting latte-drinking Starbuck-rades!" Jesus Christ on a Stick, man. Get over yourself. Major League Moron.

Re: Umm, wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is real tough coming from an anonymous coward.

Not very useful

[Smack]

I don't see the point of this. The stuff is already built into the Apple Windows products.

It would be nice if it was an actual zeroconf windows client, with Samba support or something. But it's not.

Re:Not very useful

[outZider]

"It would be nice if it was an actual zeroconf windows client"

Uh, it is.

Re:Wild guess...

[Millennium]

The protocols you describe deal serve very different purposes. Bonjour complements them, rather than replacing them.

To put it another way, TCP/IP is about transport, DHCP is about configuration, and Bonjour/Zeroconf is about discovery.

This always comes up.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Short Answer: Bonjour doesn't compare to Univeral Plug-n-Play

Bonjour compares to NetBIOS-over-TCP/IP (aka NBT aka "Workgroups") ... ie it's a broadcast protocol that finds printers and other services on your local subnet.

Unless you are using something Apple-specific like iTunes, most apps already use NBT.

Internet Explorer???

[crotherm]

From the article..

Bonjour for Windows includes a plugin to discover advertised HTTP servers using Internet Explorer.

uhh, no thanks...

Re:Internet Explorer???

[nsayer]

Ha ha.

Actually, it's incredibly useful. There are a boatload of appliances that you plug into your network nowadays that have web servers built-in to them. For instance, everybody has a firewall/NAT appliance nowadays. What if you got to the configuration page simply by finding it in a menu in your browser rather than having to either guess or look up the default IP address?

Re:Internet Explorer???

[crotherm]

That would be cool, but would it be that hard to browser agnostic? Besides, I thought MS dropped IE for OS X.

Re:Internet Explorer???

[nsayer]

Bonjour IS browser agnostic. Any browser that supports Bonjour would find and pull up any web server that advertised via Bonjour. All it would need to do is ask for a list of all of the _http._tcp advertisements on the local LAN and turn it into a bookmark-like menu. It's not hard.

And I mentioned IE because TFA is about Bonjour for Windows - which among other things adds the above Bonjour linkage functionality to IE. Safari already supports Bonjour, so any home router / NAT / firewall type appliance that advertised its configuration UI server via bonjour would show up under the Bonjour menu on a mac.

What?

[fidget42]

Oh, I don't know? Because Windows has had a full standards-based implementation of ZeroConf for...oh...seven years, so Apple can finally bring a partial, somewhat standards compliant implementation of ZeroConf to Windows users who've had it for the best part of a decade?

According to here, ZeroConf was finished on 2003. If I remember correctly, Apple provided the first ZeroConf implementation for Windows. You might be thinking about uPnP.

Re:What?

[Ohreally_factor]

You're going to doubt the word of someone who has been a Java programmer for over 20 years*? =)

*In an alternate universe

Re:What?

[bar-agent]

A Java programmer? Pff. I wouldn't expect you to find your way out of a paper bag. :P

Re:What?

[Ohreally_factor]

Maybe that's true about most Johnny-come-lately Java programmers, but if someone has been coding in Java for twenty years, that means their smart enough to have mastered time travel.

Re:Wild guess...

[PFI_Optix]

That makes more sense. The copy/paste press release in TFA was rather vague.

I guess I've just never seen a need for such a product; I didn't know there was a market for it.

So Bonjour (Rendezvous) is ...

[aminorex]

sort of like Jini, only non-portable and a few years later?

Bonjour...

[Bananatree3]

Monsieur ScuttleMonkey!

Re:Wild guess...

[Kadin2048]

It's kind of one of those products that you don't think you have a use for, until you use it accidentally. Then it strikes you as being really handy.

I didn't remember that it existed when a friend brought a PowerBook over to my house and was sitting in the living room, plugged into my LAN; a while later he asked to print something. I said "sure, go for it" figuring he'd put it on a flash drive or something and I'd print it for him, or he'd email it to me. But no, he just sent it to my shared laser printer.

It's also how Apple products do a lot of their "sharing" magic, i.e., seeing other people's photo and audio libraries on your computer.

It's kind of a subtle technology, it's not going to wow people (my friend didn't even understand why what he did was interesting, he just selected the printer from the list in the dialog box), but it works pretty well.

I'd love to see it get better supported on Linux.

Challenge?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as the product, hasn't Microsoft, Novell, and an ungodly amount of other smaller companies tried to do this before?

Novell has historically not been strong on IP networking; more recently they've figured out that IP is the way to go, but I haven't heard of any cross-platform, open-standard, widely-supported IP-network technology from them. Or from Microsoft, for that matter. (How many UPNP printers can you name?)

Has anyone used Bonjour?

Only pretty much every Mac user (Safari, iTunes, iPhoto, iChat, ...). Oh, and lots of GNOME users. And maybe a few Windows iTunes users.

What's network traffic like? ActiveDirectory and Novell are both rather chatty applications when it comes to the network.

It uses caching, duplicate message suppression, and exponential backoff. Traffic is unnoticably light.

If we can find a way to keep things quiet, this is a great idea. However, there's the challenge.

Good thing those engineers at Apple figured it out 5 years ago, then!

Zeroconf is the only service of its type that I've heard of. It's certainly the only one that runs on pure-IP networks, whose standard is open, which has multiple independent implementations, which has support from both proprietary and open-source camps, and is supported out-of-the-box by many major hardware manufacturers. If there's any competition in this area, I don't know what it is.

Linux

[metamatic]

Has anyone written a simple guide for how to get Bonjour working on Linux?

By "working", I mean I want to be able to telnet machine.local or ping machine.local like I can on OS X...

Re:Linux

[bano]

That can be accomplished via multicast dns.
There are mdns implimentations out there.

Re:Linux

[slide-rule]

A lot of the usefulness bonjour (zeroconf/whatever) provides that the user sees must be provided in the applications themselves. The underlying protocol that allows apps to advertise they provide, say, "httpd" -- and allows other apps to request a list of .local address that provide a given service -- won't do squat for the user unless apache and firefox (etc) add code to make use of it.

That said, last time I looked into this (last year, but fairly intently) the protocol is available on Linux that allow machines to trade their info, but no user-level apps did anything with it.

Re:Linux

[metamatic]

A lot of the usefulness bonjour (zeroconf/whatever) provides that the user sees must be provided in the applications themselves.

I know, but I'd like at least ssh, ping, traceroute etc. to work.

They all work on OS X, and I don't imagine Apple has written special code for all of them. Instead, they just get the DNS resolver to work for Bonjour addresses as well as regular DNS.

That's what I want to do for Linux.

Re:Wild guess...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Chuck Norris knows who John Galt is.

Dagny Taggart knows John Galt quite well, if you catch my drift....

Re:so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly odd. With Apple's planned move to Windows Vista, they want the transition to be as smooth as possible, with Mac users seeing the same plug-and-play technologies they're used to in the new platform as much as the old. From that point of view, it's in Apple's best interests to enhance and improve Windows.

Inside source: this happened on the morning Microsoft announced delays to Vista.

The board meeting

So it's Tuesday morning at Apple. The boardroom is having another meeting about the future of the Macintosh. They're perusing the feedback over the unofficial port of Windows to the Mac, and considering the consequences. There's a whole bunch of things on the agenda. OS development is hard, and it's expensive. Their competitors, Sony and Lenevo, doesn't need to do it, and they're doing pretty well all in all. Plus, there's the whole break up plan. When Apple separates into Apple Macintosh Inc and iTunes Corp, how attractive will Apple Macintosh be as a take-over target? The whole move to Intel will be for naught if it hasn't made Dell and friends just a little more excited and comfortable they could fit the Macintosh into their lines.

Apple has some little development projects on the boil and has for some time. To begin with, it's pretty much completely reimplemented the Carbon APIs under Windows. Indeed, that's how iTunes and Quicktime are implemented. But, interestingly, so are the Cocoa APIs. They're all there, Apple never stopped developing them, even after it nixed WebObjects for that platform. It's also in need of certain features that would help it with the future. Apple has no "managed code" environment - it supported Java to a certain extent, but Cocoa never was a perfect fit for that. Apple's progress with .NET, unofficially, under Windows and OS X, is coming along surprisingly well.

As time has gone on, the notion of switching to Windows as the base platform really has gotten more and more plausable. There are still roadblocks, Apple needs Microsoft to provide them with a little more customizability of the UI. A switch to Windows without providing the essential Macintosh experience just wouldn't do. But, well, .NET, and Aero, are Microsoft's attempts to break with the past. Perhaps an OS built upon these APIs could, with Microsoft's help, look entirely like a Mac environment - with the right code, obviously. You don't want a Dell user flipping a registry switch and getting a Mac.

It's clear that whatever happens, OS X is doomed. Postings by MacRumors alumni arguing that the porting of Windows to the Mac spells disaster are read out, and largely agreed with. But the question then is - does Apple continue to pour money into OS X, or could Gates and Ballmer be ameanable to making the modifications needed to make Windows Vista the next Macintosh OS?

The phone call

Jobs picks up the phone and calls Gates. There's a brief discussion, and then the phone's put down. A few minutes later, the phone rings. It's Ballmer, Gates, and Allchin.

"We think we can do it, Steve" says Bill Gates. "I mean, this is a major thing for us. It's a coup, and I know you know we're thinking it. So we're going to help in any way we can."

Allchin interjects: "Funnily enough, from our end, the code's largely there. We need a bit more time. WinFS needs some work - we'd put it on hold, but if you're going to want Spotlight on this OS, we'll need to finish it. Sticking menus at the top of the screen and reordering them... that's easy stuff. We'd appreciate it if you ported your own Dock and Finder, you can keep that proprietary if you want."

Jobs smiles. "That's perfect for us. Means we keep control over the so-called Macintosh experience. That's really the only reason we've stuck with our own operating systems for so long."

Ballmer speaks next. "Well, I'm looking at the timings, we can probably get things to you in a service pack for Vista, perhaps in April or May of 2007

Re:Wild guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

To put it another way, TCP/IP is about transport, DHCP is about configuration, and Bonjour/Zeroconf is about discovery.

Close, but not quite. Zeroconf has 3 parts (today), only one of which is discovery. The other two are configuration: one is DHCP-like functionality without a DHCP server, and one is DNS-like functionality without a DNS server.

If I go sit down in a hotel lobby next to my friend, and we open up our iBooks (with Wifi), Zeroconf enables them to pick unique IP addresses, and tell each other our names, without either of us having to run our own DHCP or DNS server, or type in IP addresses.

Service discovery is just the icing on the cake: then I'll be able to drag-n-drop a file onto his computer. And if we've already set up static IP addresses and names, Zeroconf won't interefere. (That's another nice part: it provides 3 services, independently, so if you have any one of them already, it'll just skip that.)

But Zeroconf definitely does configuration, too.

I Own a cat!

[Captain Splendid]

You insensitive clod!

Buh...

[obeythefist]

This is amazing. Am I the only guy here who actually likes controlling his network in an orderly and well managed manner?

Maybe, just maybe, I don't want devices jumping onto my network and configuring themselves any way they like.

Re:Buh...

[nsayer]

Better not run a DHCP server, then.

Re:Buh...

[obeythefist]

No, see, the really cool thing about DHCP is that you can actually configure it tightly enough that you can run with reservations only, lock down which DNS, WINS, gateway etc get provided to clients, all that kind of handy stuff. That's what we like to call "controlled and managed".

Re:Buh...

[RedBear]

Maybe, just maybe, I don't want devices jumping onto my network and configuring themselves any way they like.

I think you're completely misunderstanding this whole concept.

Bonjour (aka Zeroconf) devices don't really "configure" themselves, and they won't magically jump onto your network in any way they couldn't do without Bonjour. I think there is a part of it that makes networking easier if there is no DHCP server available, like if you directly connect two computers together to share files, but if there is a DHCP server I'm sure that takes precedence over automagic network addressing.

Mostly Bonjour devices just broadcast a few packets that let other Bonjour aware devices find them, if they want to. It means that rather than having to remember the specific IP address of every device you ever connect to your network (computers, routers, network printers, file servers, network storage devices, etc.), you only have to open the appropriate type of network browser and all the discoverable devices of that type will show up.

Open up the printer setup utility on a Mac and instead of the utility asking you where the printer is that you want to connect to, it gives you a list of every discoverable printer on your network. Most current network printers have this capability built in now, so after a few seconds they just show up in the printer browser. If you've installed the driver already or its one of a few hundred drivers already built into Mac OS X, all you have to do at that point is select the printer and click "Add" and you're done. I know, scary stuff.

With Bonjour you can even use iChat to chat with your local network neighors without having any account set up with ICQ/MSN/AIM or whatever. Users that make themselves available via Bonjour simply show up in your buddy list, and you show up in theirs (if you enabled Bonjour in the preferences for that application).

It's like automatic DNS for your LAN. You do enjoy not having to find Slashdot.org by its IP address, do you not? And isn't it helpful that if Slashdot.org moves to a new IP address you can still get to it by typing in the same human-readable address? In the same way your computer can pick up any available address anytime it connects to the network, and simultaneously it will always be available at "MyComputerName.local". You can ping your computer by that name, connect to it by that name to access shared files, type that name in a web browser, etc. Bonjour doesn't stop you from restricting your DHCP server, using static addresses, running a firewall, or whatever else you want to do to keep control over your network. You can also block UDP port 5353 if you really want to deprive yourself of the benefits of Bonjour. And of course all this only works on the local network, it's not publicly accessible by anyone on the Internet.

Of course, if you really don't want a device on your network at all, there is a very simple solution: don't plug it into your network.

By the way, Bonjour (aka Rendezvous before Apple had to change the name due to trademark issues) is merely their implementation of Zeroconf, which is an open IETF standard. There are also open-source implementations for Linux, and as far as I'm concerned it's one of the best things to come to local area networking since DHCP. You might want to look into it.

Re:Buh...

[nsayer]

Your parents potty trained you with a sharp stick, didn't they?

Relevant Link?

[pen]

A link to the actual Bonjour product page at Apple.com would've been helpful.

Apple got me with Bonjour (among other things)

[Nice2Cats]

At the risk of sounding like Ellen Fleiss here, Bonjour was one of the things that got me hooked on Apple. We have just about every type of OS at home -- Windows XP, OS X, Gentoo Linux -- and I'm used to endless fooling around to get a network running. So when I went over to set up my parents' new iMacs, connected with one of those little AirPort Express bricks, I was expecting to spend most of the day. Well, no. I give the Macs their names, I set up the network data on the AirPort, and, wham, that was it, printer and all. My first thought is, holy shit, how do they do that? My second thought is, think of all the time I've wasted. My third thought is, man, it would be a real bummer if I were to loose my homework while I'm stoned...

I tried it at home with the various machines there, but Bonjour for Windows sucked (only worked for printers anyway) and Linux, well, isn't there yet (I'm wondering if that shouldn't be an acronym: LITY. I seem to be using it a lot since I switched to a Mac).

This is a technology that should be everywhere and one you seriously don't want to be without once you have seen it (the other is Spotlight -- I'm never going to use a desktop machine again that doesn't have live searching). If you have a chance to use it, go for it.

Re:Apple got me with Bonjour (among other things)

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's another acronym for ya - MUASAALC. It stands for Mac Users are Smug and Annoying Little Cocksuckers.

Here's another for you: TBWAHTFYBWTITPDATTWMFGATDTPVAOTITPPBFHI. It stands for "That's Because We Always Have Technologies Five Years Before Windows That IT People Decry As Toys Then When Microsoft Finally Gets Around To Delivering Their Plagiarized Versions All Of The IT People Praise Bill For His Innovation."

I've been using it a lot ever since IT people started acting like overlords and taking away user choice in operating systems and platforms and forcing everyone onto crappy, insecure operating systems made of baling wire and horsehair.

How Ironic

[el_womble]

Zero Configuration software that you have to install and configure... is not zero configuration.

Unless this ships with Vista (complete with zero conf viruses) this wonderful technology will fail to help the people that need it... noobs. For sys admins and geeks this technology is like code completion, a time saver not an enabler. I guess our one, last hope is that it will be sneaked in with iTunes for Windows (hell they seem to get away with it for Quicktime), but then there is probably something a little amoral about installing a technology that makes it easier for people to find your network resources on an operating system where most of its users don't understand what a firewall does.

So if u dont run any mac machines this is useless

[majortom1981]

So if I don't run any mac osx machines this software is useless right?

A step back in time?

[squidguy]

This sounds like the hated WINS or SAP... I thought we were moving away from broadcast-based schemes. Why not just bite the bullet and use DNS with resource records? Oops...that's too difficult for the average user too.

And then for the home user we have such insecure options as the universal PnP discovery service.

Ack.

Re:Wild guess...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I guess I've just never seen a need for such a product; I didn't know there was a market for it.

Here's an instance where it's super handy: Apple ships servers with no video card. To configure them, on first boot the Server will announce itself via BonJour regardless of the IP (or no IP if there is no DCHP server) that it's using. A client utility on any ol' random Mac you have (that's on the same network) will listen for those announcements, and thereby let you connect to and configure the Server.

Otherwise you'd have to know the IP address that the server had been given in order to ssh to it to configure, and if it was on a DHCP server, or worse not assigned an IP address, you'd not know how to get to it.

I use BJ with ssh all the time. I'm managing a pool of Macs, all of them assigned IPs via DHCP; they also don't have set hostnames because that's not really necessary. I want to get to one in particular and don't know at that moment what IP it has; so my terminal client can list all of the Macs broadcasting ssh-via-bj and I select the one that I want to get to from the list. Pretty slick.

Re:So if u dont run any mac machines this is usele

[theolein]

no, most newer printer include this technology which means it can be used to find printers in your local network at home.

Doesn't gtet much simpler than this

[theolein]

http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/InstallU nix.html

Re:Doesn't gtet much simpler than this

[nsayer]

None of the steps on that page will do what the GP poster wants - allow his Linux machine to ping by name hosts using mDNS.

Someone would need to write an nsswitch "plugin" for bonjour. So far as I know, this has not been done.

Funny really

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

I have found networking on Mac's to be hit or miss. Seem like every version of OS, and intermitant releases of patchs, networking either works brilliantly, or not at all.

I mean, just try setting up a Mac to print to a printer connected on a Windows box. Depending on which version of OSX you have, and which patch, either this is braindead, or a cause for apoplexy.

While I can connect easily to Windows machines using smb, I have yet to actually SEE connected Windows boxes from a Mac, i.e. like Windows Network Neighbourhood. Conversely, while I may be able to see Mac machines connected in Windows Network Neighbourhood, I can't always connect to them.

Despite the firm root OSX has in Unix, networking has never been Apple's strong point, it might work well between Mac machines, but Mac/PC networking has always been hit or miss, and Apple doesn't seem to be improving it over time.

I can't see why Windows users will want Bonjour. I mean, networking on PC's is relatively braindead, and if configuration issues was a huge problem on Windows, Microsoft would have some other tool available. For the most part, Network Neighbourhood is all you need on windows to see and connect with other computers. But for people in mixed environments, Bonjour might be necessary so that Macs and finally work better networking with PC's.

Re:Funny really

[RedBear]

Bonjour for Windows includes the printer wizard that lets Windows PCs discover Bonjour network printers (almost any modern printer) or any printer shared by Mac OS X 10.4 or higher.

Regarding networking between Mac and Windows I had similar trouble with previous versions of OS X, but Tiger seems to have improved things a bit. SMB servers always show up in the network browser now, and connecting is no problem. Tiger even seems to be able to save the login user and password for SMB servers, which Panther always had trouble with. Panther only saw about five out of eight shared folders on my file server; Tiger sees them all and can connect to them all.

Some things to look at are your firewall settings (on both ends, but especially on the Windows end). Make sure you're using Windows 2000 or later. Make sure the access permissions are correct on your Windows shares (e.g. is the share set up to allow guest users or whatever, depends on how you're trying to connect). If you're in a network where you're limited to a single workgroup you can put your Mac(s) in the same workgroup as the PCs using the Directory Access utility (in the Utilities folder). That way you don't have multiple workgroup folders cluttering up your network browser. Of course domains and Active Directory access is a whole other animal that I don't know about, but if you're doing relatively simple network sharing between Windows and Mac OS X, Tiger seems to work much better.

There are some tricks with printers, like you can print from Windows to a lot of printers shared from Mac OS X if you're using one of the CUPS drivers on the Mac side and you tell Windows that it's printing to a LaswerWriter. Things like that. I was able to set up printing from my Mac to an Epson CX6600 printer shared from Windows with no problem so far. YMMV.

NSSwitch mDNS plugin for Linux does exist

[Colin Simmonds]

Someone would need to write an nsswitch "plugin" for bonjour. So far as I know, this has not been done.

It has been done - nss-mdns. It's been packaged for most Linux distributions. Getting it working on my Debian box was a simple matter of apt-get install libnss-mdns and then edit /etc/nsswitch.conf to use the new nss plugin.

Re:NSSwitch mDNS plugin for Linux does exist

[nsayer]

Outstanding! They should add that to the page that the G-G-GP linked to.

Now if only someone would port it to FreeBSD... :)

Not useless...

[RedBear]

So if I don't run any mac osx machines this software is useless right?

No, if you had read the release notes you'd see that you can use the Bonjour Printer Wizard to discover local Bonjour/Rendezvous printers on your network. Almost all current printers have Bonjour built-in, at least network printers. If you do happen to have any Macs on your network running at least Mac OS X 10.4 your Windows PC will also be able to access any printers shared from those Macs.

If you don't really do any printer sharing on your home network or have a laptop that you take to other locations where there might be network printers or Macs with shared printers attached to them, you probably won't see any benefit from installing this.

Chess pieces...

[Anonymous Coward]

The chess pieces are slowly getting into place...

Bootcamp - Ability to run a Windows partition
Bonjour - Ability to "talk" to Windows properly

The Virtualization piece is the only thing missing... Maybe Steve will announce that in WWDC.. who knows? Imagine the possibilities!