mDNS [0] itself is "just" send/listen to multicast UDP packets on a specific address (224.0.0.251 and/or ff02::fb) on a specific port (5353). The only real comp

mDNS [0] itself is "just" send/listen to multicast UDP packets on a specific address (224.0.0.251 and/or ff02::fb) on a specific port (5353). The only real complication to mDNS itself is that the format of the packets you send/receive are designed to resemble (regular, unicast) DNS and it's a complex (but well known) binary packet format. The complications most people associate with Bonjour/Avahi and its "points of failure" are most often issues with optional add-on standards such as DNS-SD [1] UPnP [2], and other related add-on standards on top of mDNS that make up so called "zero-conf networking". You don't need DNS-SD or UPnP to use mDNS for basic hostname discovery. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast_DNS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast_DNS [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-configuration_networking#DNS-SD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-configuration_networking#... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play