Feature request: HTTPS support

[mikescott]

Please would you be able to add support for _https._tcp services? I would like to advertise services such as my Unifi controller and Proxmox interface, both of which require HTTPS. Currently these aren't detected by LocalSites as it only supports _http._tcp.

[plan44]

Hi Mike,

LocalSites intentionally does not support _https._tcp, for the following reason (from the service types registry, emphasis mine:

https: HTTP over SSL/TLS Tim Berners-Lee <timbl at W3.org> Protocol description: RFC 2616

NOTE: Web browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer (with the Bonjour for Windows plugin) DO NOT browse for DNS-SD service type "_https._tcp" in addition to browsing for "_http._tcp".

This is a conscious decision to reduce proliferation of service types, to help keep DNS-SD efficient on the network. Today, if a user types http://www.mybank.com/ into their web browser, the web server automatically redirects the user to https://www.mybank.com/. Rather than having an entirely different DNS-SD service type for https, we recommend using the same redirection mechanism: advertise a plain "http" service, which consists of nothing except an HTTP redirection to the desired "https" URL.

Work is currently being done on adding mechanisms to HTTP and TLS to allow the server to tell the client that it needs to activate TLS on the current connection before proceeding. If this becomes widely adopted, it further justifies the decision to not create a separate DNS-SD service type "_https._tcp", because security becomes just another one of the things that is negotiated on a per-connection basis (like content-type negotiation today) rather than being an entirely separate thing.