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Re: AutoDiscovery vs Rendezvous (was Re: REALbasic 5.5a9 available)

To: REALbasic Betas <realbasic-betas at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: AutoDiscovery vs Rendezvous (was Re: REALbasic 5.5a9 available)
From: Mike Benonis <mbenonis_lists at mac dot com>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 20:27:03 -0500
on 11/26/03 7:53 PM, James Milne at james dot milne at mac dot com wrote:

>>> [New] [All] Networking: Added three new networking classes to make
>>>             networking with RB easier.  Please see the New Networking
>>>             Classes.txt ReadMe for more information about the
>>>             EasyTCPSocket, EasyUDPSocket and AutoDiscovery classes.
>> 
>> Ohohohoh.  Could this AutoDiscovery thing be somehow related to
>> rendezvous?  If so, kick ass!
> 
> It's related, but it doesn't strike me as actually being Rendezvous;
> it's
> based on their UDPSocket so one would assume they've written their
> own protocol. This is slightly disappointing since:

Right, and it makes it 100% useless for me.  Says Aaron in the ReadMe:
--
>> This also applies to the AutoDiscovery class.  AutoDiscovery is not
>> Rendezvous 
>> (or Zeroconf); it is a propriatary protocol under the hood.  Because of this,
>> you will not be able to auto-discover things like iChat over your network.
--

> a) Apple is trying to push a standard for this sort of stuff, and it's doesn't
> help if even a prominent middleware tool vendor like REAL Software won't
> support it and choose to roll their own
> 
> b) It's incompatible with everything else that currently uses Rendezvous, so
> we won't be able to search for Rendezvous-compatible devices on a network
> using it.
> 
> There's no technical reason that REAL couldn't provide Rendezvous
> support. It would have 0% overhead on Mac OS X, and Apple provide
> open-source, restriction-free of the mDNSResponder (the thing that
> makes Rendezvous actually work) for Linux, Windows, POSIX-based
> Unix and Mac OS 9. It could be rolled into a plugin that supported all
> the platforms. This was something I had intended doing for SuperSocket,
> perhaps rolling it into a separate plugin so that people who didn't use
> it didn't have to drag along a copy of the mDNSResponder.
> 
> I'd prefer REAL replaced this class with a plugin implementation that
> used Rendezvous.

I agree completely.  Why did REAL Software write their own class when there
exists a free protocol for this exact purpose, that just about every device
now supports?  It makes no sense, and I hope that REAL Software will
reconsider and rewrite this so-called easy class to use Rendezvous.

-Mike


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