Avahi is a fully LGPL framework for Multicast DNS Service Discovery. It allows programs to publish and discover services and hosts running on a local network with no specific configuration.
What is Avahi?
Avahi is a system which facilitates service discovery on a local network via the mDNS/DNS-SD protocol suite. This enables you to plug your laptop or computer into a network and instantly be able to view other people who you can chat with, find printers to print to or find files being shared. Compatible technology is found in Apple MacOS X (branded "Bonjour" and sometimes "Zeroconf").
Avahi is primarily targeted at Linux systems and ships by default in most distributions. It is not ported to Windows at this stage, but will run on many other BSD-like systems. The primary API is D-Bus and is required for usage of most of Avahi, however services can be published using an XML service definition placed in /etc/avahi/services.
See also the nss-mdns project, which allows hostname lookup of *.local hostnames via mDNS in all system programs using nsswitch
