Standalone server mDNS vs DNS

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Standalone server mDNS vs DNS

I'm having trouble connecting to my standalone server via its mDNS name. It seems to respond immediately after booting but then disappears. My questions are:

What's the relationship between mDNS and DNS in the server?
Is mDNS always on independent of the DNS in the server admin?
Where are the relevant logs for it?

Thanks
Tom

Mac OS X (10.5)

Posted on Nov 9, 2007 10:28 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 21, 2007 5:51 PM in response to Tom Kornack

mDNS is 2 things together; DNS Service Discovery AND Multicast DNS.

DNS Service Discovery is a way of using standard DNS programming interfaces, servers, and packet formats to browse the network for services.

Multicast DNS is a way of using familiar DNS programming interfaces, packet formats and operating semantics, in a small network where no conventional DNS server has been installed. This is also know as the Zero-Conf initiative.

read your manual page on mDNSResponder for more 'quasi-specific Info' and here are a few links.

http://www.dns-sd.org/
http://www.multicastdns.org/

Oh, to answer your question. mDNS will help you find other machines on your local subnet by their name+.local domain. So, if mDNS is working properly, you should ALWAYS be able to find your machine by its name.local. You can find your hostname by opening terminal and typing 'hostname -s'

Hope that Helps.
Peter

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