Zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. It does not require manual operator intervention or special configuration servers. Without zeroconf, a network administrator must set up network services, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS), or configure each computer's network settings manually.
Zeroconf is built on three core technologies: automatic assignment of numeric network addresses for networked devices, automatic distribution and resolution of computer hostnames, and automatic location of network services, such as printing devices.
Background Computer networks use numeric network addresses to identify communications endpoints in a network of participating devices. This is similar to the telephone network, which assigns a string of digits to identify each telephone. In modern networking protocols, information to be transmitted is divided into a series of network packets. Every packet contains the source and destination addresses for the transmission. Network routers examine these addresses to determine the best network path in forwarding the data packet at each step toward its destination.
Similar to telephones being labeled with their telephone number, it was a common practice in early networks to attach an address label to networked devices. The dynamic nature of modern networks, especially residential networks in which devices are powered up only when needed, desire dynamic address assignment mechanisms that do not require user involvement for initialization and management. These systems automatically give themselves common names chosen either by the equipment manufacturer, such as a brand and model number, or chosen by users for identifying their equipment. The names and addresses are then automatically entered into a directory service.
Early computer networking was built upon technologies of the telecommunications networks and thus protocols tended to fall into two groups: those intended to connect local devices into a local area network (LAN), and those intended primarily for long-distance communications. The latter wide area network (WAN) systems tended to have centralized setup, where a network administrator would manually assign addresses and names. LAN systems tended to provide more automation of these tasks so that new equipment could be added to a LAN with a minimum of operator and administrator intervention.
An early example of a zero-configuration LAN system is AppleTalk, a protocol introduced by Apple Inc. for the early Macintosh computers in the 1980s. Macs, as well as other devices supporting the protocol, could be added to the network by simply plugging them in; all further configuration was automated. Network addresses were automatically selected by each device using a protocol known as AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol (AARP), while each machine built its own local directory service using a protocol known as Name Binding Protocol (NBP). NBP included not only a name but the type of device and any additional user-provided information, such as its physical location or availability. Users could look up any device on the network with the application Chooser, which filtered names based on the device type.
On Internet Protocol (IP) networks, the Domain Name System database for a network was initially maintained manually by a network administrator. Efforts to automate maintenance of this database led to the introduction of a number of new protocols providing automated services, such as the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).
Address selection Hosts on a network must be assigned IP addresses that uniquely identify them to other devices on the same network. On some networks, there is a central authority that assigns these addresses as new devices are added. Mechanisms were introduced to handle this task automatically, and both IPv4 and IPv6 now include systems for address autoconfiguration, which allows a device to determine a safe address to use through simple mechanisms. For link-local addressing, IPv4 uses the special block , while IPv6 hosts use the prefix . More commonly, addresses are assigned by a DHCP server, often built into common networking hardware like computer hosts or routers.
Most IPv4 hosts use link-local addressing only as a last resort when a DHCP server is unavailable. An IPv4 host otherwise uses its DHCP-assigned address for all communications, global or link-local. One reason is that IPv4 hosts are not required to support multiple addresses per interface, although many do. Another is that not every IPv4 host implements distributed name resolution (e.g., multicast DNS), so discovering the autoconfigured link-local address of another host on the network can be difficult. Discovering the DHCP-assigned address of another host requires either distributed name resolution or a unicast DNS server with this information. Some networks feature DNS servers that are automatically updated with DHCP-assigned host and address information.
IPv6 hosts are required to support multiple addresses per interface; moreover, every IPv6 host is required to configure a link-local address even when global addresses are available. IPv6 hosts may additionally self-configure additional addresses on receipt of router advertisement messages, thus eliminating the need for a DHCP server.
Both IPv4 and IPv6 hosts may randomly generate the host-specific part of an autoconfigured address. IPv6 hosts generally combine a prefix of up to 64 bits with a 64-bit EUI-64 derived from the factory-assigned 48-bit IEEE MAC address. The MAC address has the advantage of being globally unique, a basic property of the EUI-64. The IPv6 protocol stack also includes duplicate address detection to avoid conflicts with other hosts. In IPv4, the method is called link-local address autoconfiguration. However, Microsoft refers to this as Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) or Internet Protocol Automatic Configuration (IPAC). The feature is supported in Windows since at least Windows 98.
Name service discovery Internet protocols use IP addresses for communications, but these are not easy for humans to use; IPv6, in particular, uses very long strings of digits that are not easily entered manually. To address this issue, the internet has long used DNS, which allows human-readable names to be associated with IP addresses, and includes code for looking up these names from a hierarchical database system. Users type in domain names, such as example.org, which the computer's DNS software looks up in the DNS databases to retrieve an IP address, and then hands off that address to the protocol stack for further communications.Marshall Brain and Stephanie Crawford, "How Domain Name Servers Work", howstuffworks
Looking up an address using DNS requires the IP address of the DNS server to be known. This has normally been accomplished by typing in the address of a known server into a field in one of the devices on the network. In early systems, this was normally required on every device, but this has been pushed up one layer in the hierarchy to the DHCP servers or broadband devices like cable modems that receive this information from their internet service provider. This has reduced the user-side administration requirements and provides a key element of zero-configuration access.
DNS was intended to provide uniform names to groups of devices within the same administration realm, such as example.org, provided by a name service. Assigning an address to a local device, e.g., thirdfloorprinter.example.org, normally requires administrator access to the DNS server and is often accomplished manually. Additionally, traditional DNS servers are not expected to automatically correct for changes in configuration. For instance, if a printer is moved from one floor to another, it might be assigned a new IP address by the local DHCP server.
To address the need for automatic configuration, Microsoft implemented NetBIOS Name Service, part of which is the Computer Browser Service already in Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 as early as 1992. NetBIOS Name Service is zero-configuration on networks with a single subnet and may be used in conjunction with a WINS server or a Microsoft DNS server that supports secure automatic registration of addresses. This system has small, but not zero, management overhead even on very large enterprise networks. The protocols NetBIOS can use are part of the Server Message Block (SMB) suite of open protocols which are also available on Linux and iOS, although Windows typically supports a wider range of so-called dialects which can be negotiated between Windows clients that support it. For example, Computer Browser Services running on server operating systems or later versions of Windows are elected as so-called master browser over those that are not running a server operating system or running older versions of Windows.
In 2000, Bill Manning and Bill Woodcock described the Multicast Domain Name Service which spawned the implementations by Apple and Microsoft. Both implementations are very similar. Apple's Multicast DNS (mDNS) is published as a standards track proposal , while Microsoft's Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) is published as informational . LLMNR is included in every Windows version from Windows Vista onwards and acts as a side-by-side alternative for Microsoft's NetBIOS Name Service over IPv4 and as a replacement over IPv6, since NetBIOS is not available over IPv6. Apple's implementation is available as the Bonjour service since 2002 in Mac OS X v10.2. The Bonjour implementation (mDNSResponder) is available under the Apache 2 Open Source License and is included in Android Jelly Bean and later under the same license.
Use of either NetBIOS or LLMNR services on Windows is essentially automatic, since using standard DNS client APIs will result in the use of either NetBIOS or LLMNR depending on what name is being resolved (whether the name is a local name or not), the network configuration in effect (e.g. DNS suffixes in effect) and (in corporate networks) the policies in effect (whether LLMNR or NetBIOS are disabled), although developers may opt into bypassing these services for individual address lookups.
With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft announced the deprecation of NetBIOS and LLMNR and adopted mDNS.Aligning on mDNS: ramping down NetBIOS name resolution and LLMNR mDNS in the Enterprise Although the Windows 10 implementation in earlier releases (Version 1703) was limited to discovering networked printers, screen mirroring devices, wireless speakers etc, subsequent releases (Windows 10 1903 and later) resolved hostnames as well. mDNS takes precedence in Windows 10 and later but LLMNR, NetBIOS Name Service, and SSDP continue to work as a fallback for now alongside mDNS in Windows.
The mDNS and LLMNR protocols have minor differences in their approach to name resolution. mDNS allows a network device to choose a domain name in the local DNS namespace and announce it using a special multicast IP address. This introduces special semantics for the top-level domain local, which is considered a problem by some members of the IETF. The current LLMNR draft allows a network device to choose any domain name, which is considered a security risk by some members of the IETF. mDNS is compatible with DNS-SD as described in the next section, while LLMNR is not.
Service discovery