[clug] Bonjour/ZeroConf Advocacy

[Alex Satrapa]

Just a quick heads up in case some of you have been living in a cave  
longer than I have. Did you know you can do this with Linux and Mac OS

[alex at MacBook]% ssh alex at ubuntu.local
...
[alex at ubuntu]%

Where "local" is the magic domain used by multicast DNS. These  
machines will talk to each other regardless of the network they're on,  
as long as they're on the same logical segment (or there's a router in  
the middle that forwards multicast requests). No DHCP or DNS required!

Heck, I can launch "JollysFastVNC" on the Mac, select Windows ->  
Server List, and what do you know? There's "alex's remote desktop on  
ubuntu" right there in the service list! For the Macophiles, this is  
just Bonjour in operation. Other people call it ZeroConf.

If you've set up a firewall on your box, but you want to take  
advantage of Bonjour you'll need to open up UDP port 5353 for the  
multicast DNS, plus the service ports for services that you actually  
want to use. I use FireHOL for the firewall, so these rules are needed  
to tell FireHOL that mdns is allowed:

> server_mdns_ports="UDB/5353"
> client_mdns_ports="default"
>
> ...
>
> interface any world
>     ...
>     server mdns accept
>     ...
>     client all accept

*sigh*

Technology has come so far, it's almost like I'm back in 1993 with  
System 7 and LocalTalk all over again!

Alex