Customer Reviews

Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide

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Are you a curious user or software developer or hardware developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Daniel Steinberg and Stuart Cheshire, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that provides an in-depth look at the components of Zeroconf technology and a survey of programming APIs that will allow you to Zeroconf-enable your product.

Steinberg and Stuart Cheshire, begin by giving you a quick overview of the various components that make up Zeroconf. Then, the authors discuss link-local addressing. Next, they provide a description of multicast DNS. The authors then provide you with a description of DNS Service Discovery. They continue by introducing the concepts of DNS Service Discovery and focus on how it applies to discovering services on the local link using Multicast DNS. Then, the authors introduce the dns-sd command line toll that lets you experiment with Zeroconf service advertising and discovery before you actually write your first line of Zeroconf.code. Next, they introduce you to the C API for advertising and browsing for services. The authors then explain the Java API, which lets you write portable cross-platform programs that will run on any supported platform that ha Java and Zeroconf installed. They continue by describing two of the Bonjour APIs that are specific to Mac OS X: CFNet-Services and Cocoa's NSNetServices. Finally, they outline the Zeroconf support appearing in some unexpected languages like Ruby and Python.

This most excellent book shows you how you can, with very little effort, make your devices a lot easier to use. More importantly, this book explains how you can add the benefits of TCP/IP networking to your products without having to sacrifice ease of use.

I needed to design a simple network protocol for custom embedded devices with features similar to Zeroconf.
I spent quite some time gathering bits and pieces about it on the web before giving up and buying this book. It's comprehensive. It explains different Zeroconf design choices and pitfalls, which was important to me.

First of all, this book wasn't what I expected. I was anticipating a UNIX-like book about how to use common servers to automate network and computer configurations. I guess I should have read the book description better. Instead, it is very Mac-centric and covers service discovery, automatic configuration, and Apple's zeroconf software currently known as Bonjour.

After discovering early on that this was not the book I was looking for, I still decided to read it cover to cover. It is actually ok, but I see lots of arguments against zeroconf. First of all, security. I would not recommend attaching a zeroconf network directly to the Internet. There are too many opportunities for the bad guy to exploit your network when things just automagically configure themselves. That's why UPnP just kind of died. Sure, this stuff is useful for secure isolated networks, but those are becoming a rarity. Security is addressed very briefly and the authors don't make a very strong argument.

Second, zeroconf is to make our lives easier by not having to run service oriented servers, like DNS and DHCP, however, this book tells you how to setup and use DNS to make zeroconf work better; very contradicting.

I would recommend this book to a Mac application developer who is building an app that needs to take advantage of service discovery and automatic configuration. There is tons of good API code snippets, explanations, and examples. However, if you are a regular Mac/UNIX/Windows user who just wants your computer to automatically detect your network printers, scanners, cameras, etc., you can skip this book and find all the documentation you need online. I would suggest starting at Wikipedia.

'Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide' by Daniel Steinberg is a great network resource book for any and all administrators, developers, and/or tinkerers!! Packed to the brim with networking goodness, this is a wonderful book for anyone that wants to learn to network things smarter, better, and faster than ever before!! Written in classic O'Reilly fashion with ~220 pages of solid content, this is a nice buy for all interested parties :^)

***** RECOMMENDED

Stuart Cheshire and Daniel H. Steinberg's Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide tells how to integrate hardware and software with no configuration files in between - and no error messages. Zeroconf is a standard for building self-configuring applications, from LANs to printer files and file-sharing software: Zero Configuration Networking tells how to put it all together with easy implementation. Three 'Hacks' titles provide options for working with networks, images and programs.