itunes network connectivity

[skisteven1]

does anyone know how the autodiscover stuff works for itunes?

my friend says it won't go over more than one switch (ie, two people on the same subnet but physically connected to different switches can't talk to each other), but I think it's subnet related. We dont' have enough computers to test, and I couldn't find anything with a quick google.

Anyone know how that works?

 

[nweaver]

As a disclaimer, I have never used Itunes, but I will make an assumption:

Autodiscover is probably a Broadcast based process.

Assuming that, then Autodiscover will work over (theoreticly) a million switches, because it sends out a broadcast, and any client/server that is set to listen to those will reply. Broadcast domains are not defined by switches, but by routers (or networks/subnets, if you prefer). Collision domains are what a switch divides the network into.

Think of a hub as a single wire that everyone uses for EVERYTHING. A switched network is a single wire everyone uses for BROADCASTS but is an individual set of wires for each client for non broadcast traffic (i.e unicast, node to node).


So I tunes will work across multiple switches, because it is a single broadcast domain.

It will not work across Subnets/routers because those are what segment networks into multiple broadcast domains.