Similarly to telephones being labeled with their telephone number, it was a common practice in early networks to attach an address label to networked devices. Network routers examine these addresses to determine the best network path in forwarding the data packet at each step toward its destination. Every packet contains the source and destination addresses for the transmission.
In modern networking protocols, information to be transmitted is divided into a series of network packets. This is similar to the telephone network which assigns a string of digits to identify each telephone. 4.4.3 Efforts toward an IETF standard protocolĬomputer networks use numeric network addresses to identify communications endpoints in a network of participating devices.Zeroconf is built on three core technologies: automatic assignment of numeric network addresses for networked devices, automatic distribution and resolution of computer hostnames, and automatic location of network services, such as printing devices. Without zeroconf, a network administrator must set up network services, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Domain Name System (DNS), or configure each computer's network settings manually.
It does not require manual operator intervention or special configuration servers. Zero-configuration networking ( zeroconf) is a set of technologies that automatically creates a usable computer network based on the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) when computers or network peripherals are interconnected. Technologies for automatic network connection configuration