Title: Service Discovery for IP applications

Abstract: If your application has any place where a human user enters a hostname or IP address, or uses broadcast to discover the address of a device, come to this tutorial to learn how you can use network service discovery to improve that user experience.

Description:

Many IP applications today are still configured manually. Sometimes a human user needs to enter a hostname or IP address in a configuration file or user-interface field. Sometimes software will use its own ad hoc broadcast-based discovery mechanism to learn the IP address of the peer with which it wishes to communicate. In both cases, using the IETF’s standard DNS-based service discovery mechanism, defined in RFC 6763, provides better user experience and more efficient use of the network.

In this tutorial we will cover the APIs available on Windows, Android, Linux, macOS, and iOS, that facilitate the three fundamental operations of DNS-based service discovery: Offer, Enumerate, and Use.

Sometimes the “use” step may be performed multiple times, as in the case of printing on a network printer. In other cases, the “enumerate” and “use” steps are performed just once, for the purpose of one-time provisioning and configuration of a new device added to the network.

This tutorial covers both local service discovery using Multicast DNS, defined in RFC 6762, and wide area service discovery using conventional unicast DNS, both via manual configuration of DNS servers (as is done for printing at IETF meetings) and via automation tools like a Discovery Proxy (defined in draft-ietf-dnssd-hybrid).

For those arriving early, we will be holding service discovery “code clinic” hours at the IETF 106 Hackathon on Saturday. Come by for hands-on help updating your application to use network service discovery.

Speaker: Stuart Cheshire