What's the equivalent of Bonjour for Windows

Question

The Mac has "Bonjour". Whats the equivalent on Windows?

Answer 1

You can get bonjour for windows

Answer 2

Bonjour! It runs on Windows too. Here's a link to the wikipedia entry, you can read more starting there.

Answer 3

Bonjour is an implementation of Zeroconf (Zero Configuration Networking), which consists of the protocols mDNS (Multicast DNS) and DNS-SD (DNS-Service Discovery). mDNS provides "link-local addressing", while DNS-SD is a means for devices to discover services provided by other devices on the network.

While there is a Windows version of Bonjour, Microsoft does have its own implementation of zero-configuration networking that isn't exactly the same.

Here's Wikipedia on Zeroconf:

Both versions of the Internet Protocol, IPv4 and IPv6, have standard methods of automatically configuring network interface addresses through a method called address autoconfiguration. IPv4 uses the 169.254.0.0/16 (link-local) set of addresses defined in RFC 3927. In IPv6, both link-local addresses and global unicast addresses may be automatically self-configured by a host, see RFC 4862.

The technique is called Link-Local address assignment in RFC 3927. However, Microsoft refers to this as Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) or Internet Protocol Automatic Configuration (IPAC) (supported since at least Windows 98).

UPnP is a separate architechure, considered a competitor in some ways and an altogether different technology in others. It supports a form of zero-configuration networking but doesn't use the mDNS/DNS-SD protocols that Apple utilizes. UPnP provides a service discovery protocol called Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) that is a rough equivalent to DNS-SD.

In particular, Wikipedia's Zeroconf article, UPnP article, and the O'Reilly Zeroconf-vs-UPnP article (from chills42's comment) are the best references for comparing the two and getting a feel for how they differ.

Answer 4

The equivalent for Bonjour in Windows is Universal Plug and Play. It has been part of Windows sinds XP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play