[olePigeon]

About 6 months ago my dad got back from Geneva at a IEEE 802.11 meeting. Usually IEEE meetings are the best place to see companies screw each other over at the last minute, it's the Corporate Congress. However, it's been a while since Microsoft actually showed up to a IEEE meeting, and it's certainly been a while when there's been universal animosity towards Microsoft from all the companies represented at IEEE.

Most everyone knows about zeroconf, Zero Configure Networking. There's a standard for it. Almost everyone supports it. Apple, Cisco, HP, etc.

So in comes Microsoft with their special Microsoft Zero Configure. In the classic Microsoft "embrace and extend," they've taken zeroconf and gave it the Microsoft Special Sauce. So in typical Microsoft fashion, it breaks compatibility with the existing standard and adds a crap load of unnecessary network traffic. On top of that, my dad (along with many others) were really pissed because they're going to have to spend literally millions of dollars to update all their network products to accommodate just Microsoft when an existing, perfectly good standard already exists.

[design219]

And... this surprises you?

[Kevin]

Can people not tell MS .. "NO"
?

[olePigeon]

Originally Posted by Kevin 

Can people not tell MS .. "NO"
?

Sure, if they want to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and marketshare.

[mduell]

With Microsoft's operating system on ~90% of personal computers, whatever they implement is the de facto standard for the industry.

Other groups (IEEE, W3C, etc) can get together and write whatever they want on paper, but at the end of the day most developers (hardware and software) are going to go with what MS picks.

[Nivag]

but if they did say no, then 90% of the machines wouldn't work and that would upset the enduser and that could prove costly as well. if someone had the balls to do this it would be interesting to see what would happen.

[shifuimam]

I'm curious...what is zeroconf in layman's terms? What is the standard that Apple, HP, Cisco, and others follow that Microsoft has broken? What did Microsoft do?

I looked up zeroconf in Wikipedia, but it was a little over my head - I'm not much of a networking person.

[Gossamer]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I'm curious...what is zeroconf in layman's terms? What is the standard that Apple, HP, Cisco, and others follow that Microsoft has broken? What did Microsoft do?

I looked up zeroconf in Wikipedia, but it was a little over my head - I'm not much of a networking person.

It sounds like it's DHCP and DNS without the server setup...your computer can join a network and acquire a network address without having the server set up. I'm not sure if that's right but that's what I gathered.

[Kevin]

Sounds like abuse of a monopoly to me.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I'm curious...what is zeroconf in layman's terms? What is the standard that Apple, HP, Cisco, and others follow that Microsoft has broken? What did Microsoft do?

I looked up zeroconf in Wikipedia, but it was a little over my head - I'm not much of a networking person.

The first paragraph of the body of the Wikipedia article is pretty layman:
Zeroconf currently solves three problems :
* Choose numeric network addresses for networked items
* Figure out which computer has a certain name
* Figure out where to get services, like printing (service discovery)

[memory-minus]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I'm curious...what is zeroconf in layman's terms?

Bonjour.

[PB2K]

are there errors in this explanantion?

do you remember appletalk? it was a network in which your computer had a name, instead of a number (IP). Zeroconfig is about giving a name to the computer too but works with pc's outside your home-network too.

[Big Mac]

That's really quite lame. Did anyone bother to ask M$ why it was necessary to use a different specification?

[Y3a]

If MS is the defacto standard, why don't they follow their own standards? I think the outcry from 90 percent of the user base would have some weight if they suddenly couldn't do something. it's up to the rest to DO THAT TO THEM!

[Art Vandelay]

Originally Posted by PB2K 

do you remember appletalk? it was a network in which your computer had a name, instead of a number (IP).

AppleTalk had numbers too, they just weren't used by the end user. The zone had a unique number and each client had a unique number. The names were associated with the numbers. In the AppleTalk control panel, you could see the numbers and IIRC manually set the numbers in the advanced settings.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The first paragraph of the body of the Wikipedia article is pretty layman:
Zeroconf currently solves three problems :
* Choose numeric network addresses for networked items
* Figure out which computer has a certain name
* Figure out where to get services, like printing (service discovery)

This is what I saw in wikipedia:

Zeroconf or Zero Configuration Networking is a set of techniques that automatically create a usable IP network without configuration or special servers. This allows unknowledgeable users to connect computers, networked printers, and other items together and expect them to work automatically. Without Zeroconf or something similar, a knowledgeable user must either set up special servers, like DHCP and DNS, or set up each computer's network settings by hand, which is a tedious task, and is challenging for non-technical people.

That sounds like what any standard home router does - you plug in your crap, and it all works immediately. Network-capable printers (e.g. those with an RJ-45 jack) will work immediately as well. To map to drives on another computer, you only need to know its name.

The second part confused me a bit. How do you setup a network to assign IPs or names to its connected notes without using something like DHCP? Where are the IP addresses going to come from?

And what did Microsoft do that is nonstandard?

It seems like such a technology might not necessarily be a good idea in a large LAN environment, like a university or a school. At IU, students are assigned an IP address that is linked to the MAC address of their network adapter. They have to use their username and password to get this assignment, so that if they do anything illegal, it's much easier to track down who to blame.

Sorry for being such an idiot - I'm just trying to understand the information here.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

That sounds like what any standard home router does - you plug in your crap, and it all works immediately. Network-capable printers (e.g. those with an RJ-45 jack) will work immediately as well. To map to drives on another computer, you only need to know its name.

The second part confused me a bit. How do you setup a network to assign IPs or names to its connected notes without using something like DHCP? Where are the IP addresses going to come from?

That's pretty much what it's doing, except for wireless networks and without any central server (the router/switch box in your example). Zeroconf replaces DHCP, and the hosts figure out the appropriate IP address on their own.

[vmarks]

Except that Apple already provides zeroconf for Windows.

Apple - Support - Downloads - Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3

So what's necessary is for all these MFRs who want to ship standard compliant devices to simply bundle in Apple's or a similar zeroconf driver, and IGNORE Microsoft's stack.

They can still claim Windows support, and support the IEEE standard.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by mduell 

That's pretty much what it's doing, except for wireless networks and without any central server (the router/switch box in your example). Zeroconf replaces DHCP, and the hosts figure out the appropriate IP address on their own.

I read a little more about it on the O'Reilly website...it sounds like it it's mostly for small home networks. I would imagine that having 10,000 computers on a large corporate LAN would cause a bit of network havoc if they were all constantly broadcasting for connected printers, computers, servers, etc...and the inability to control who has what IP address might be problematic in the example of how IU keeps track of who's on the network and who's doing what without requiring all users to logon to a domain controller.

I can see how in a small home network this would be handy - plug in a printer, hard drive, and a computer computers, and they're all connected to each other without any user interaction. That sounds pretty neat. I'm still interested in how computers will be connected to the network correctly if they're left to their own devices to figure out the appropriate IP address. Without the right network address, you can't get a connection to a DNS server to actually get on the Internet...

From the OP, though, I'm not sure how Microsoft's own UPnP came as a surprise to Cisco, HP, Apple, and others - I know that's been around for awhile, and seems to be the direct competitor to Zeroconf/Rendezvous. If Zeroconf is also to be used for wireless networks, I would assume that Microsoft would implement UPnP much the same way..?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by vmarks 

Except that Apple already provides zeroconf for Windows.

Apple - Support - Downloads - Bonjour for Windows 1.0.3

So what's necessary is for all these MFRs who want to ship standard compliant devices to simply bundle in Apple's or a similar zeroconf driver, and IGNORE Microsoft's stack.

They can still claim Windows support, and support the IEEE standard.

System Requirements says "Windows 2000 or later" but it doesn't work with Vista.

[Drakino]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

The second part confused me a bit. How do you setup a network to assign IPs or names to its connected notes without using something like DHCP? Where are the IP addresses going to come from?

Something both Zeroconf and uPNP share is the idea of a "link-local" address. If a device doesn't get an IP from DHCP, and isn't statically setup, it will pick one in the 169.254 range with a subnet of 255.255.0.0. It does ping the address first to see if it is in use, and if not, claims the address picked.

Microsoft has always been a big supporter of uPNP and the followup, DWPS. The 360 uses it to grab media off a PC, and a ton of non Apple devices use it as well.

Now, Wireless Zero Configuration is a different thing, and is basically a name to indicate the wireless card will try to autojoin any wireless network it can to gain access, and doesn't have much to do with uPNP, ZeroConf, or DWPS.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by Drakino 

Something both Zeroconf and uPNP share is the idea of a "link-local" address. If a device doesn't get an IP from DHCP, and isn't statically setup, it will pick one in the 169.254 range with a subnet of 255.255.0.0. It does ping the address first to see if it is in use, and if not, claims the address picked.

Microsoft has always been a big supporter of uPNP and the followup, DWPS. The 360 uses it to grab media off a PC, and a ton of non Apple devices use it as well.

Now, Wireless Zero Configuration is a different thing, and is basically a name to indicate the wireless card will try to autojoin any wireless network it can to gain access, and doesn't have much to do with uPNP, ZeroConf, or DWPS.

So, the no-DHCP-server part of zeroconf is more or less for small LANs that don't need access to the Internet, right? Kind of like a peer-to-peer home network?

Is the OP talking about wireless zeroconf, like Microsoft's nifty little application (or any wireless config app, for that matter, including those from Dell and Intel) that auto-connects you to non-secured WAPs, or is he talking about this zeroconf technology?

If the subject is this zeroconf vs UPnP war, I don't see why it's a big shock to HP and Cisco and the like that Windows uses it, since it's been around since at least XP (which was released in, what, 2001? 2002?)...not only that, but it seems pretty useless for a large-scale LAN with thousands of nodes...which is what HP and Cisco market their networking equipment for.