Mac OS X 10.2 Rendezvous or ZeroConf
by Volker Weber
When Jobs announced the availability of a technology called 'Rendezvous' in the next version of Mac OS X (code name Jaguar), It was said that rendezvous was Apple's attempt to introduce AppleTalk ease-of-use into the IP-network world. And indeed, Rendezvous is nothing less than ZeroConf in disguise.
ZeroConf is a working group of the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). The ZeroConf group isn't really very new. It was chartered in September 1999. However, the group did start working rather late. It held its first official meeting in November last year.
The charter of the ZeroConf group is to enable Zero Configuration IP networking. This means the group wants to make it possible to have small IP-networks without any intervention of humans. Take for example two laptop computers and connect them with a crossover Ethernet cable. They won't communicate sucessfully using IP without someone setting up the 'network' so the two computers know of each other's existence.
ZeroConf wants to make it possible the two computers do 'see' each other on the IP network without any intervention or setup, much like the AppleTalk protocol worked before Mac OS X came along and made AppleTalk obsolete. The ZeroConf group doesn't want to limit the network to just two hosts, but such a simple network is taken as a starting point.
