Consultant Multicast DNS (mDNS) provides the ability to perform DNS-like operations on the local link in the absence of any conventional unicast DNS server. Extended mDNS (xmDNS) extends the specification of mDNS to site-local scope in order to support multi-hop LANs that forward multicast packets but do not provide a unicast DNS service. Like mDNS, xmDNS designates a portion of the DNS namespace to apply to the site-local network and specifies rules for its use.