How to Block Apple Bonjour on your Local Network

14 May 2015 | Computers, Networking | 6 comments

Block Bonjour!Bonjour is Apple’s way of doing zero-configuration networking. It’s a bit of software that does three things:

  1. Service discovery on the local network (LAN)
  2. IP address assignment/sharing
  3. Hostname resolution

Normally, things like IP address assignment are handled by DHCP. With Bonjour, the idea is that all you have to do is plug your gizmos in, and turn them on. Bonjour will then “scan” the network, and all devices and services on the LAN will be automagically configured for you. Each gizmo will have an automatically configured IP and hostname, and you’re done.

This is great, except when you don’t want Bonjour to do its thing. Perhaps you have a mostly Windows/Linux LAN, or you want to restrict access to a certain group of computers on your LAN that are separated from the rest by a physical home router/firewall. Bonjour makes this rather difficult, since it sneaks by basic IP/MAC filtering you might set in your router.

So, how do you block Bonjour?

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