Service discovery is the process of automatically detecting devices and services on a
computer network. It aims to reduce the manual configuration effort required from users and administrators. A service discovery protocol (SDP) is a
network protocol that helps accomplish service discovery.
Service discovery requires a common language to allow software agents to make use of one another's services without the need for continuous user intervention.[1]
Protocols
There are many service discovery protocols, including:
Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) standards-based neighbor discovery protocol similar to vendor-specific protocols which find each other by advertising to vendor-specific broadcast addresses (versus all-1's), such Cabletron (Enterasys) and Cisco Discovery Protocol (both referred to as CDP but different formats).
Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP), usually used for unicast exchange of multicast source information between anycast Rendez-Vous Points (RPs) to service mcast clients.
^Lim, Byong-In; Choy, Kee-Hyun; Shin, Dong-Ryeol (2005). Sunderam, V.S.; van Albada, G.D.; Sloot, P.M.A.; Dongarra, J. (eds.). An Architecture for Lightweight Service Discovery Protocol. International Conference on Computational Science. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. pp. 963–966.
doi:10.1007/11428862_148.
ISBN978-3-540-32118-7.