[bind10-dev] Why the non-standard mDNS rather than LLMNR?

[roy at nominet.org.uk]

Shane Kerr wrote on 06/30/2009 03:09:19 PM:

> Stephane,
>
> On Tue, 2009-06-30 at 14:03 +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> > In <https://bind10.isc.org/wiki/IdeaDump>, I see:
> >
> > mDNS/Bonjour support
> >
> > Why these proprietary protocols rather than RFC 4795?
>
> Oh, no special reason - that page is just a place for random ideas. To
> be honest I don't know anything about the relationship between mDNS &
> Bonjour & LLMNR.
>
> A quick look at Wikipedia reveals:
>
>         In 2000, Bill Manning and Bill Woodcock described the Multicast
>         Domain Name Service[1] which spawned the implementations by
>         Apple and Microsoft. Both implementations are very similar.
>         Apple's Multicast DNS (mDNS) is an open specification, while
>         Microsoft's Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) is
>         little used and the specification is not an IETF standards track
>         publication. The latter was published as informational RFC 4795.
>
>         The two protocols have minor differences in their approach to
>         name resolution. mDNS allows a network device to choose a domain
>         name in the local namespace and announce it using a special
>         multicast IP address. This introduces special semantics for the
>         local domain,[2] which is considered a problem by some members
>         of the IETF.[3] 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.[4] mDNS is compatible with DNS-SD
>         as described in the next section, while LLMNR is not.[5]
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast_DNS
>
> It looks like there is no good standards work in this area. Is there any
> reason that an interested developer would not be able to easily
> implement both?

Lack of good standards. However it is unlikely you'll find an interested
developer to be able to easily implement both. Then there is the lack of
support, resources and ultimately, funding.

Regards,

Roy Arends
Sr. Researcher
Nominet UK