Apple Bonjour across vlans?

RouterOS Forwarding Protocols
1

Hi Mikrotik community! I am playing around with replacing my home lab setup with all Mikrotik. Right now I am using a Fortinet stack that was gifted to me. It is awesome, but I get bored and want to try something new… anyhow, right to the point.
In my home lab I use 3 VLANs. My TVs and AppleTV, multifunction printer and such are on VLAN 5, my wife and I are on VLAN 10, and my kids are on VLAN 15. We use airprint to our printer, and our phones to control the AppleTV. Both of those features use multicast. Right now I have no problem with the Fortinet stack routing that multicast traffic between VLANs. I dabbled briefly in this before with Mikrotik and got stumped. I am not using Mikrotik wireless access points at this time. Not sure if that detail helps, but incase it does, there you go!

So my specific question: I want multicast traffic to be able to flow between my TV VLAN (vlan 5), and my “parents” vlan (VLAN 10). Can someone help me understand the right want to do that on Mikrotik?

2

Well. Multicast routing is available on RouterOS with the multicast packet.

Another solution is a mDNS repeater/reflector. This is not yet supported by RouterOS, but can be run on any Linux-machine.
https://linux.die.net/man/5/avahi-daemon.conf

3

Is there an example or a dummies’ guide on doing this somewhere?

4

Not being a huge fan of bridging bonjour as it creates a point where a router could be injected it’s actually possible to use the Apple associated services via DNS directly in a way that isn’t tied to leaking an intentionally link-local discovery protocol throughout your wan. That said the RouterOS DNS server is lacking the features to implement it.

RFC 6763

5

So what are the tools/apps, and hardware to do this via Apple associated services?

6

Just correctly crafted DNS records in your DNS server. It just so happens that RouterOS has a very limited DNS resolver.

7

Isn’t the whole point of Bonjour/ZeroConf discovery supposed to be DNS independent?
For example, the HDHomeRun TV tuner discovery requires the EyeTV application to probe and listen on the same subnet. How would DNS records address this issue across VLANs?

8

I don’t think it is possible to do it just on a router. I tried.

9

Can’t be done in RouterOS without MT creating an avahi server package, which they have no plans to do.

10

…

…
Thanks @vortex and @macsrwe - that was my understanding too, but @idlemind said that it was possible to do it via DNS:
.

11

It’s not that you can use a DNS to make Bonjour work, it’s that you can use a DNS as a next-best option to compensate for the fact that Bonjour doesn’t work.

12

And how does one do that?

13

Give your devices names and preassigned DHCP reservations, then reference them by name instead of using Bonjour at all.

Yes, it’s replacing a zero-configuration process with a configuration process. Sorry, but that’s all there is.

14

.
Not sure how that is a work around so devices in one VLAN can “see” devices in another VLAN when they are listening for Bonjour broadcasts.

15

They’re never going to see those broadcasts. The mechanics of why have been previously posted. Bonjour will not work on remote access connections without active server assistance.

If you absolutely need Bonjour to work, you’ll have to obtain the avahi server, invest in a Linux device to run it, and configure it to your taste.

16

.
That was my understanding too, but @idlemind said:

it’s actually possible to use the Apple associated services via DNS directly in a way that isn’t tied to leaking an intentionally link-local discovery protocol throughout your wan.

.
Do you know what he might have had in mind?

17

No.