User-Friendly, Versatile, and Efficient Multi-link DNS Service Discovery

Abstract

When mobile devices at the network edge want to communicate with each other, they too often depend on the availability of faraway resources. For direct communication, feasible user-friendly service discovery is essential. DNS Service Discovery over Multicast DNS (DNS-SD/mDNS) is widely used for configurationless service discovery in local networks; due in no small part to the fact that it is based on the well established DNS, and efficient in small networks. In our research, we enhance DNS-SD/mDNS providing versatility, user control, efficiency, and privacy, while maintaining the deployment simplicity and backward compatibility. These enhancements are necessary to make it a solid, flexible foundation for device communication in the edge of the Internet. In this paper, we focus on providing multi-link capabilities and scalable scopes for DNS-SD while being mindful of both user-friendliness and efficiency. We propose DNS-SD over Stateless DNS (DNS-SD/sDNS), a solution that allows configurationless service discovery in arbitrary self-named scopes – largely independent of the physical network layout – by leveraging our Stateless DNS technique and the Raft consensus algorithm.