Looking for dns-sd capabilities in the browser

[Raymond den Ouden]

Hi,

I am working for a project which makes software for taking assessments.

These assessments can be hosted on a online server or on one or more machines within a network. We already implemented MDNS for ad-hoc discovery of these machines, but on bigger sites most of the times the networks are often subnetted which is an issue since MDNS only lives in their own broadcast network.

Therefore we try to implement the dns-sd which has PTR, SRV and TXT records for discovery as described at https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6763

Our apps are based on the google stack and try to stay within de default boundaries. We have several versions of the applications, which include a desktop app (which is built with nwjs) and Chomium App.

Chrome does not seem to support the DNS based discovery of services, I read that there might be some security concerns, while it supports MDNS, which in my opinion more insecure because anyone can add a service in the network.

The NWJS app is included in a stripped down linux OS which we control and we can come up with a workaround in either the OS, or possibly through nodejs.

The biggest issue will be the chromebooks where we can not put such workaround since it is a Chomium App, as I read some threads it seems like dns-sd will never make it to the browser.

I hope there might be some sort of solution how te resolve the local assessment services provided by dns-sd in the network?

[mark a. foltz]

Chrome apps support mDNS/DNS-SD via an apps-only API:

https://developer.chrome.com/apps/mdns

This should also work in Chromium based builds.  If it does not, that seems like a bug and can be filed in our bug tracker for investigation.

As you say above, chrome.mdns is restricted to a given broadcast subnet.  I know of no plans to support wide area service discovery in chrome.mdns.  Feel free to file an feature request in our bug tracker under Platform>Extensions>API but no promises.

For your use case, I suggest using traditional unicast DNS using a nameserver you control.  If enumeration of domain names is required, a simple Web service that vends a list of hostnames seems more straightforward than setting up DNS-SD.

Good luck.

m.

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