Simple Service Discovery Protocol

The Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) is a network protocol, associated with the Internet protocol suite, for advertisement and discovery of network services and presence information. It accomplishes this without the assistance of server-based configuration mechanisms, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) or the Domain Name System (DNS), and without special static configuration of a network host. SSDP is the basis of the discovery protocol of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) and is intended for use in residential or small office environments. It was formally described in an IETF Internet Draft by Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard in 1999. Although the IETF proposal has since expired (April, 2000), SSDP was incorporated into the UPnP protocol stack, and a description of the final implementation is included in UPnP standards documents.