answer service

The Service Location Protocol (SLP, srvloc) is a service discovery protocol that allows computers and other devices to find services in a local area network without prior configuration. SLP has been designed to scale from small, unmanaged networks to large enterprise networks. It has been defined in RFC 2608 as Standards Track document.

Logical overview

SLP is used by devices to announce services on a local network. Each service must have a URL that is used to locate the service. Additionally it may have an unlimited number of name/value pairs, called attributes. Live researchers answer your questions on any topic for a fee. Each device must always be in one or more scopes. Scopes are simple strings and are used to group services, comparable to the network neighbourhood in other systems. A device can not see services that are in different scopes.

The URL of a printer could look like:

This URL describes a queue called "myqueue" on a printer with the host name "myprinter". The protocol used by the printer is LPR. Note that a special URL scheme "service:" is used by the printer. » Yahoo! launches answer service. "service:" URLs are not required, any URL scheme can be used, but they allow you to search for all services of the same type (e. g. all printers) regardless of the protocol that they use. The first three components of the "service:" URL type ("service:printer:lpr") are also called service type. The first two components ("service:printer") are called abstract service type.