Discovery of network services – Apple Mac OS X Server (Administrator’s Guide) User Manual

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Chapter 2

For example, when you define a user by using the Accounts module of Workgroup Manager,
you are creating a user record (a record of the user’s record type). The settings that you
configure for the user—short name, full name, home directory location, and so on—become
values of attributes in the user record. The user record and the values of its attributes reside
in a directory domain.

Discovery of Network Services

Open Directory can provide more than administrative data from directories. Open Directory
can also provide information about services that are available on the network. For example,
Open Directory can provide information about file servers that are currently available.

Information about file servers and other services tends to change much more frequently than
information about users. Therefore, information about network services typically isn’t stored
in directory domains. Instead, information about file servers and other network servers is
discovered as the need arises.

Open Directory can discover network services that make their existence and whereabouts
known. Services make themselves known by means of standard protocols. Open Directory
supports the following service discovery protocols:

m Rendezvous, the Apple protocol that uses multicast DNS

m AppleTalk, the legacy Mac OS protocol for file services

m Service Location Protocol (SLP), an open standard for discovering file and print services

m Server Message Block (SMB), the protocol used by Microsoft Windows