[Nottingham] Avahi, Zeroconf, UPnP

[Martin]

On 15/01/2019 16:54, VM via Nottingham wrote:
> What's wrong with avahi? Poettering's last commit was in 2012! It's
> modular and doesn't grow like cancer...


In decades, I've never needed it nor wanted it. Similarly so for such as
Zeroconf and UPnP... Worse still, they can cause great confusion and
they can expose or even be the cause of vulnerabilities. There are
repeated exploits "in the wild" of anything UPnP...

In any case: Whoever uses a network without DHCP?! Unless that is you're
already an uber-geek and you know that you are deliberately doing some
sort of P2P.

On home networks with few devices and only one user, that trio of
silliness might be benign enough. In the workplace with multiple devices
desperately offering services promiscuously to anything and everything
on a network, they can be hilariously bad for the silliness that then
ensues...

It is far less confusing to have the human aware and in control of what
connects to what, and if and when they want it to. That can still be
'simple' for people and without any need of dumbing things down to
assumed monkeys.


Cheers,
Martin


See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avahi_(software)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-configuration_networking

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