Bonjour (software) - Overview

Overview

Bonjour provides a general method to discover services on a local area network. The software is widely used throughout OS X, and allows users to set up a network without any configuration. As of 2010 it is used to find printers and file-sharing servers. iTunes uses Bonjour to find shared music, iPhoto to find shared photos, iChat, Adobe Systems Creative Suite 3, Proteus, Adium, Fire, Pidgin, Skype, Vine Server, and Elgato EyeTV to share local recordings with multiple clients, the Gizmo5 to find other users on the local network, TiVo Desktop to find digital video recorders and shared-media libraries, SubEthaEdit and e to find document collaborators, Contactizer to find and share contacts, tasks, and events information, and Things & OmniFocus to synchronize projects and tasks across the Mac desktop and the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch. It is used by Safari to find local web servers and configuration pages for local devices, and by Asterisk to advertise telephone services along with configuration parameters to VoIP phones and dialers. Software such as Bonjour Browser or iStumbler, both for Mac OS X, or Zeroconf Neighborhood Explorer for Windows, can be used to view all services declared by these applications. Apple's "Remote" application for iPhone and iPod Touch also uses Bonjour to establish connection to iTunes libraries via Wi-Fi.

Bonjour only works within a single broadcast domain, which is usually a small area, without special DNS configuration. Mac OS X, Bonjour for Windows and AirPort Base Stations may be configured to use Wide Area Bonjour which allows for wide area service discovery via an appropriately configured DNS server.

Applications generally implement Bonjour services using standard TCP/IP calls, rather than in the operating system. Although Mac OS X provides various Bonjour services, Bonjour also works on other operating systems. Apple has made the source code of the Bonjour multicast DNS responder, the core component of service discovery, available as a Darwin open source project. The project provides source code to build the responder daemon for a wide range of platforms, including Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Linux, *BSD, Solaris, VxWorks, and Windows. Apple also provides a user-installable set of services called Bonjour for Windows and Java libraries. A number of Windows programs use Zeroconf, including Adobe Systems Creative Suite 3, iTunes, Cerulean Studios' Trillian Pro 3, Ruckus Music Player from Ruckus Network, and the text editor e.