- Discovering Services
- Using a Service
- Connecting Links
- Summary
Connecting Links
Currently, Rendezvous does not work across multiple subnets. The Multicast DNS it now uses for Service Discovery is implemented for single-link networks. Apple points out that Dynamic Update and unicast query support should be expected in future versions of Rendezvous. So, if your network has two links and you want to use Rendezvous, the network will require the infrastructure of a bridge or router to connect the links. This device should also contain a DHCP server to assign addresses and a mini-DNS server to handle DNS and Dynamic DNS Updates. Devices on the network will use Dynamic Update to register the service with the mini-DNS server in the router, and the clients looking for services will use standard unicast DNS queries addressed to that server to get the records for the service.
Although Rendezvous defines its own protocol for discovering services, it places no restriction on the services that are eventually discovered. Any application protocol layered on top of TCP/IP or UDP/IP can be discovered by Rendezvous.