Q: How come Apple Bonjour (Formerly Rendezvous) is unable to locate devices and services that are on the same BSC managed network as as each other?
A: Apple Bonjour (Formerly Renezvous) is Apple Inc.'s trade name for its implementation of Zeroconf, a service discovery protocol. The software comes built into Apple's Mac OS X operating system and iOS for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad from version 10.2 onward, and can be installed onto computers using Microsoft Windows operating systems. Bonjour is also used by several applications such as iTunes.
Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using broadcast, and multicast traffic. By default BlueSecure Access Points (BSAPs) tunnel traffic back to the BlueSecure Controller (BSC) in EtherIP (IP Protocol 97). By default the BSC does not send broadcast and multicast traffic back out the EtherIP tunnels therefore other clients will not see the traffic and not be able to locate devices and services. In order to send broadcast and multicast traffic back out the EtherIP tunnels the following routes must be added under network>routing table>create static route entry for the appropriate managed interface.
Broadcast Traffic
Route Destination
192.168.160.255
Route Gateway
255.255.255.255
Netmask
255.255.255.255
Interface
Managed
This above example assumes we are referring to the managed physical network and the subnet is 192.168.160.0/24. If this is a managed vlan the Interface entry should be populated with the appropriate managed vlan.
Multicast Traffic
Route Destination
224.0.0.0
Route Gateway
255.255.255.255
Netmask
240.0.0.0
Interface
Managed
This above example assumes we are referring to the managed physical network. If this is a managed vlan the Interface entry should be populated with the appropriate managed vlan. You may also be required to allow services in the firewall policy of the appropriate role specific to the application. For example UDP 5353 for multicast DNS.
WARNING. Configuring these broadcast/multicast routes in networks with large broadcast domains/subnets may cause performance issues.
