“Printers and other network devices that configure themselves so
you don’t have to–that’s the promise of zero configuration
networking (zeroconf), a set of standard protocols being developed
by the Zeroconf Working Group of the Internet Engineering Taskforce
(IETF.) And you have to admit, the concept does have a great deal
of appeal–running and managing a corporate network is hard work,
and eliminating tedious configuration tasks would certainly make
the job a little bit easier.“But before you get too excited, it’s worth bearing in mind
that, unlike the auto-configuration capabilities built in to IPv6,
zeroconf is designed for home offices and small company LANs. If
you administer a big corporate network then Zeroconf isn’t going to
change you life–the best you can hope for is that the branch
office on the other side of town will be able to add a printer to
its LAN without you or one of your staff having to go and configure
it…”