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Apple proposing new Bonjour sharing standard
In order to remedy the woes many universities are experiencing using Apple's Bonjour zero-configuration Multicast DNS technology on large scale networks, NetworkWorld reports that the company is proposing a new standard that can be built to support huge numbers of users at once. "We targeted Bonjour at home networks, but over the last 10 years Multicast DNS -- what Apple calls Bonjour -- has become very popular," explains Apple engineer Stuart Cheshire, speaking at an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting this week. "Every network printer uses Bonjour. TiVo, home video recorders and cameras use it. iPads and iPhones use it, and we are starting to get a lot of demand from customers that they won't be able to print from iPads to a printer in the next building." Universities have been quite outspoken about their desire to have Apple step in and offer new solutions, and the wishlist of new functionality is long. Things like smooth communication between separate IP subnets and added security and encryption features are at the top of the list. But Apple won't be doing it alone, and the IETF will play a big role in building the new standard. The task force will be meeting again in March 2013, and by that point it is expected that work on the project will be well underway.
MDNS and caffeine: How I got Bonjour running on my iPhone
See this picture? It's a picture of my iPod touch. But here is the interesting thing. The picture you see is actually a screen shot from my iPod touch. As you can see from the iPod logo, it has no on-board camera. Instead, it's subscribed to a Bonjour service on my iPhone and using its camera instead to take a picture of itself.
