System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP)

Service Discovery

Network services include printing, file transfer, music sharing, servers for photo, document and other file sharing, and services provided by other local devices. DNS service discovery support in the Solaris OS includes open source framework and tools from Apple to enable applications to advertise and discover network services, using DNS on the Solaris OS.

For users, network service discovery makes computing easier by enabling users to browse for services on the network, rather than needing to find the service manually. Existing standards, and work done by other companies and groups, assure that cross-platform support is available.