ZeroConfNetworking

Revision 3 as of 2006-11-08 20:05:21

Clear message

Please check the status of this specification in Launchpad before editing it. If it is Approved, contact the Assignee or another knowledgeable person before making changes.

Summary

This spec involves the proper handling of assigning link-local addresses, and using them successfully when no static configurations are used and no DHCP responses are seen.

Rationale

Use cases

  1. finding one's own ip on local network
  2. two laptops on separate logical networks communicating with link-local
  3. notice that unicast .local domain exists when using avahi

Scope

Design

Implementation

  • basefiles(?) update to include description of link-local network
    • add "link-local 169.254.0.0" to /etc/networks
  • dhclient hook for DNS changes to check for unicast "local" TLD
    • if ! host -t soa local. >/dev/null 2>&1; then dbus-msg OMGPONIES; fi

  • zeroconf
    • remove package from archive
  • libnss-mdns
    • start with version 0.8-5
    • audit and promote to main
    • read debian #393711
      • audit for error conditions around nsswitch.conf updating sanity
    • build package with --disable-legacy (drops ministack)

  • network manager
    • patch with proper avahi ll hooks, especially adhoc modes
  • avahi-autoipd
  • avahi-daemon
    • enable by default
  • in /etc/network/interfaces add some comments on how to set up manual ll addresses correctly.
  • ifupdown, g-s-t
    • patch to include "ipv4ll" method for sane configuration in /etc/network/interfaces

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

Clarification of terminology

Zeroconf is a collection of protocols including ipv4 link local, mdns, and dns service-discovery. Apple's implementation of zeroconf was named "Rendezvous", and was later renamed to "Bonjour". Avahi is a free software implementation of zeroconf. See http://avahi.org/wiki/AboutAvahi.

IPv4 link-local addresses are in the 165.254.0.0/16 space.

mDNS is DNS over multicast on the local network.

DNS-sd allows for service discovery using mDNS.


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