DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD) is a DNS standard that allows sets of services and resources to be easily published, browsed and accessed over a network. It is a standard most commonly used in local networks to discover nearby printers, scanners and other resources over multicast DNS (which Apple refers to as Bonjour or Rendezvous). However, the standard also specifies how Service Discovery is defined for use in the Global DNS infrastructure.

Just as DNS A records map IP addresses to domain names, DNS LOC records map GPS coordinates to a domain name. We have an early prototype for a browser-based sig0namectl resource location app. The current version renders GPS coordinates of each resource entered within a browsing domain. Each sig0 key can create a list of known resources and add DNS LOC records to record their current location. We have also developed helper applications for devices connected to a GPS unit to update their own coordinates in real time.

With all the team present in Berlin, we took the opportunity to hold an informal team meeting outside the P4P conference held at offline.place, a community space in Berlin. Afterwards Mathias Jud gave a lightning talk for the sig0namectl project. A get-together for local first protocols, the event was well attended by distributed crypto application developers (including Secure Scuttlebutt). Mathias’ sig0namectl lightning talk generated a good amount of interest amongst the participants.