Avahi (software)

Infobox Software
name = Avahi



caption = Avahi running under Xubuntu
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author =
developer = The Avahi Project
released =
latest release version = 0.6.23
latest release date = June 26, 2008
latest preview version =
latest preview date =
frequently updated =
programming language = ?
operating system = Cross-platform
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genre = Networking
license = LGPL
website = [http://avahi.org/ avahi.org]

Avahi is a free Zeroconf implementation, including a system for multicast DNS/DNS-SD service discovery. It allows programs to publish and discover services and hosts running on a local network with no specific configuration. For example you can plug into a network and instantly find printers to print to, files to look at and people to talk to. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Avahi is an implementation of the Apple Zeroconf specification, and implements mDNS, DNS-SD and RFC 3927/IPv4LL. Other implementations include Apple's free/open source Bonjour framework.

Avahi provides a set of language bindings (Python, Mono, etc.) and ships with most Linux and *BSD distributions. Because of its modularized architecture, Avahi is already integrated in major desktop components like GNOME's Virtual File System and the KDE input/output architecture.

The Avahi project was originally started due to the controversial license of Apple's Bonjour Zeroconf implementation. Since then, Bonjour has been relicensed under the less controversial Apache License. However, Avahi had already become the de-facto standard implementation of mDNS/DNS-SD on free operating systems such as GNU/Linux.

Stuart Cheshire (creator of Zeroconf) has stated that Apple works with the Avahi team and is impressed with their progress; so much so that Avahi might "overtake Apple's implementation". [ [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7398680103951126462 Stuart Cheshire speaks about Zeroconf at Google] ]

History

Avahi has been developed by Lennart Poettering and Trent Lloyd. It is the result of a merger of Poettering's original mDNS/DNS-SD implementation called "FlexMDNS", and Lloyd's original code called "Avahi" that happened in 2005. While most of today's code originates from the former project, the name of the latter was used for the joint project. Development on "FlexMDNS" started in late 2004, and work on the original "Avahi" began in early 2004.

Avahi was originally developed under the freedesktop.org umbrella, but has now become a separate project. Avahi, however, makes use of freedesktop.org's D-Bus IPC layer.

The name "Avahi" refers to the woolly lemur, a species of primates indigenous to Madagascar. Trent Lloyd found the name, liked it, and it stuck. The logo reflects this. [http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1150_GNOME.ogg]

See also

* freedesktop.org - the site that formerly hosted avahi

Standards
* Zeroconf - the standard avahi is based on

Other Implementations
* Bonjour (software) - a proprietary mDNS implementation by Apple Inc., used in Mac OS X

Protocols providing similar functionality
* Service Discovery - list of protocols that provide similar functionality

Other Links
* Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
* Network Information Service
* OSGi Alliance

References

External links

* [http://avahi.org/ Avahi project]
* [http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2007/video/monday/monday_1150_GNOME.ogg Avahi talk] by Poettering/Lloyd at linux.conf.au 2007.