Service discovery protocols are network protocols which allow automatic detection of devices and services offered by these devices on a computer network.

Service discovery is an essential ingredient of the Semantic Web, since the future Web must allow software agents to make use of one another's services without the need for continuous user intervention.^[1]

There are many service discovery protocols, including:

• DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD), part of Apple Computer's Zeroconf technology
• Service Location Protocol (SLP)
• Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) as used in Universal Plug and Play (UPnP)
• UDDI for web services
• Jini for Java objects.
• Bluetooth Service Discovery Protocol (SDP)
• Salutation
• XMPP Service Discovery (XEP-0030)
• WS-Discovery (Web Services Dynamic Discovery)
• Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS)
• Web Proxy Autodiscovery Protocol
• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
• XRDS (eXtensible Resource Descriptor Sequence) used by XRI, OpenID, OAuth, etc.

Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) should not be confused with Session Description Protocol (SDP), which is intended for describing multimedia sessions for the purposes of session announcement, session invitation, and other forms of multimedia session initiation.

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