[Beowulf] mdns

[Ashley Pittman]

There are two parts to mdns, automatic address configuration and then
the advertising of services on top of those addresses.  I'm not sure
which of these you are asking about, I realised after I'd hit send that
my answer only applied to the second of these.

At home I use what according to Wikipedia is called DNS-SD to enable
rythmbox on my desktop to automatically discover the daap servers on
either my Mac (iTunes) or on another Linux machine (firefly media
server).  I'm (just) young enough never to have used a Windows desktop
so I can't comment on what active directory offers.

Unfortunately with Multicast I think network bottle necks are a fact of
life and on network with static hardware configuration it really is
better to have a static software configuration as well.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Ashley Pittman.

On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 16:26 +0200, Jon Aquilina wrote:
> can u clarify what you mean by sound server. so basically what you are
> telling me if there is a windows dns server (active directory in
> server 2k3) mdns can replace the active directory server? also is
> there a way to curtail the network bottle necks?
> 
>  
> On 7/7/08, Ashley Pittman <apittman at concurrent-thinking.com> wrote: 
>         On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 15:59 +0200, Jon Aquilina wrote:
>         > is mdns strictly for the mac os or can it be incorporated
>         into any
>         > linux cluster??
>         
>         It works under Linux, my sound server at home and the printers
>         at work
>         use this quite satisfactorily.
>         
>         I would caution against using it in a cluster however, it's
>         design-goal
>         and benefit are to handle changing network environments where
>         devices
>         are being added to and removed from the network
>         frequently.  This is the
>         polar opposite of what you should try and aim for in a cluster
>         where the
>         hardware configuration is known in advance and for the most
>         part
>         constant.  In addition it used to be the case there were
>         performance
>         issues associated with using zeroconf on large networks and
>         the last
>         thing you want in a cluster is additional network traffic
>         clogging up
>         the system.
>         
>         Ashley Pittman.
>         
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jonathan Aquilina