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Avahi is a system for multicast DNS service discovery. It allows programs to publish and discover services and hosts running on a local network with no specific configuration. For example you can plug into a network and instantly find printers to print to, files to look at and people to talk to. It is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
Avahi is an implementation of the Zeroconf specification. Other implementations include Apple's open source Bonjour framework and Howl, a framework which is no longer actively maintained.
Avahi provides a set of language bindings (Python, Mono etcetera) and ships with many Linux and *BSD distributions. Because of its modularized architecture, Avahi is already integrated in major desktop components like GNOME's Virtual File System or KDE's input/output architecture.
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