Apple Bonjour
What is Apple Bonjour?
Apple Bonjour is a group of networking technologies designed to help devices and applications discover each other on the same network.
Bonjour is Apple's version of the Zero Configuration Networking (Zeroconf) standard, a set of protocols that allows certain communication between network-connected devices, applications and services. Bonjour is often used in home networks to allow Windows and Apple devices to share printers. Technically, Zeroconf is a group of open Layer 2 protocols for quickly setting up an IP network. The original name of Bonjour was Rendezvous, but Apple changed the name in 2005 after a trademark dispute with a company called Tibco Software.
Bonjour was originally designed to locate Apple devices on a single network with one router, but because it is such a useful tool for network administrators dealing with IT consumerization, wireless vendors are helping to bring Bonjour to the enterprise. Aerohive, for example, has released a free VMware virtual appliance that allows Bonjour to operate across networks on different subnets or virtual LANs. Cisco has announced that it would turn its WLAN controllers into a Bonjour gateway, providing network administrators with policy-based management capabilities BYOD end users.
Bonjour software comes preinstalled on macOS and iOS. Some Apple software, such as iTunes and Safari, automatically installs Bonjour on Windows machines.
