Name Binding Protocol
Name Binding Protocol (NBP) is a term used in computer science .
The Name Binding Protocol, or NBP for short, is part of the AppleTalk protocol suite and is responsible for assigning device names and services to AppleTalk addresses and AppleTalk sockets in a local network. Since AppleTalk addresses are not assigned by central authorities, but rather the AppleTalk devices automatically assign them to themselves via AARP , there is a need to convert fixed device names to addresses that can change constantly. The NBP takes on this task by assigning fixed names to the dynamic addresses, taking into account name conflicts.
Not only device names, but also the services offered are covered by NBP. For each AppleTalk device, services can be provided on up to 254 different AppleTalk sockets (the IP equivalent to the sockets would be the TCP ports ). If a printer can be reached via AppleTalk via PAP as a "color laser" and a server offers file services via AFP , both "Color laser: LaserWriter " and "Big Mac: AFPServer" are registered in the AppleTalk network via NBP .
The Name Binding Protocol is not an openly standardized protocol but has been published by Apple .
The protocol does not belong to the transport layer , but is arranged between this and the application layer (the AppleTalk protocols do not exactly fit into the ISO-OSI layer corset). Historically, like the other protocols in the AppleTalk suite, NBP is one of the dying varieties. In TCP / IP networks, since the spread of the Zeroconf approach, the NBP functionality has been continued by the multicast DNS protocol.
The AppleTalk protocol stack
The AppleTalk protocols can be divided into several layers that form a protocol stack . The protocols can be classified in the ISO-OSI reference model as follows :
| OSI layer | AppleTalk protocol stack | ||||||
| 7th | AFP | PAP | |||||
| 6th | |||||||
| 5 | ZIP | ASP | ADSP | ||||
| 4th | ATP | AEP | NBP | RTMP | |||
| 3 | DDP | ||||||
| 2 | LLAP | ELAP | TLAP | FDDI | ← AARP | ||
| 1 | LocalTalk |
Ethernet driver |
Token Ring Driver |
FDDI driver |
|||
literature
- Sidhu, Andrews, Oppenheimer: Inside AppleTalk , 2nd, Addison-Wesley, 1999
- Apple Computer Inc .: Inside Macintosh: Networking , 2nd, Addison-Wesley, 1994 , Chapter 1 - Introduction to AppleTalk (online version)