[Olsr-dev] New plugin: DNSSD

[Dan Staples]

Hi all, I have a new plugin for your consideration:

The aim of the DNSSD (DNS Service Discovery) plugin is to control the
propagation of mDNS service advertisements on an OLSR mesh. The plugin
is based on the P2PD plugin code. Instead of forwarding mDNS traffic
onto the mesh with a fixed TTL value, as P2PD does, DNSSD allows each
local service to define it's own TTL value. For example, a service that
has a TTL value of 3 will only be advertised a maximum of 3 hops away.
This can be useful for services and applications that either want to
remain local in scope (like a community bulletin board) or whose service
quality degrades after so many hops (like streaming voice or media).

The plugin works as follows:
* DNSSD searches through Avahi service files in a directory specified by
the "ServiceFileDir" config option.
* Any service files in the directory containing a TTL txt-record field
and a domain field matching the "Domain" config option (e.g.
'mesh.local') are added to a list of local services.
* Just like the P2PD plugin, DNSSD listens on non-OLSR interfaces and
forwards mDNS packets to the mesh, but with the following differences:
    -- Any non-query Resource Records that describe any service in the
list of local services are stripped out, and the remaining packet is
forwarded with the default TTL value.
    -- Resource records that were stripped out are sorted into bins
according to the custom TTL values of the local services they describe.
    -- Each bin of RRs is then put into a new mDNS packet, given a
custom TTL value in the OLSR header, and then forwarded to the mesh.

Let me know if you need any clarifications. I tested it on a local
Commotion mesh and it seems to work fine. The code can be found here:
https://github.com/danstaples/olsrd-dnssd. I'll be doing more testing
soon on a larger mesh.

cheers,
Dan Staples

-- 
Dan Staples

Open Technology Institute
https://commotionwireless.net