# "Make it super-easy to connect to a box without knowing its IP address" **URL:** \ **Category:** 📦 Appliances (Docker, Snappy, VM, NCP, AIO)\ **Created:** [January 17, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978 "2018-01-17T19:38:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pdfkungfoo](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/pdfkungfoo/32/215_2.png) [@pdfkungfoo](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/pdfkungfoo)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978/1 "2018-01-17T19:38:16Z")
Continuing the discussion from [NextCloud Box & Raspberry PI 3 Image - Availability & Download?](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/nextcloud-box-raspberry-pi-3-image-availability-download/5070/14): > [@NextCloud Box & Raspberry PI 3 Image - Availability & Download?](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/nextcloud-box-raspberry-pi-3-image-availability-download/5070/14): > > Friends, with regards to Pi3 support - we promised December 9, we promised a week later but sadly we still haven’t found a good solution for what we’re trying to do (make it super easy to connect to a box without knowing it’s IP address). I just came across this post (which is more than a year old), and I don’t have the time to research if that has been resolved in the meanwhile, so my reply may be completely out of scope. If so, feel free to remove it as unnecessary noise and delete or mute or close it or whatever options there are for the site admins. However, I’d like to quickly point out, that you’d have a very good solution to _“make it super easy to connect to a box without knowing its IP address”_ if you researched the topics of “ZeroConf”, “Bonjour”, or the Linux implementation of both “Avahi”, which are documented in official RFCs: see the _**[DNS-SD/rfc6763](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc6763.txt)**_ (DNS Service Discovery) and _**[mDNS/rfc6762](http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc6762.txt)**_ (Multicast DNS) documents published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Also, my [feature request from 18 months ago](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/feature-request-nextcloud-servers-and-clients-should-support-zeroconf-a-k-a-bonjour/476), if implemented, would include _“super easy connections to a box without knowing its IP address”_. ---
**Author:** ![jospoortvliet](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/jospoortvliet/32/3_2.png) [@jospoortvliet](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/jospoortvliet)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2018, 7:14pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978/2 "2018-01-23T19:14:42Z")
We use zeroconf/bonjour in the Nextcloud box already. But this does not work on the wider internet, nor does it ALWAYS work. Eg it is not supported on any Windows version other than Windows 10. Right now, though, our Box advertises itself on the network as ‘nextcloud.local’, which works in most situations. The bigger problem is opening a port in the firewall ☹ ---
**Author:** ![pdfkungfoo](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/pdfkungfoo/32/215_2.png) [@pdfkungfoo](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/pdfkungfoo)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 10:03am UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978/3 "2018-01-24T10:03:45Z")
> _“this does not work on the wider internet”_ ZeroConf originally wasn’t designed to work on the wider internet. However, some later extensions (called _Wide Area Bonjour_) do add support for this. So this _ **CAN** _ also work on the wider internet. However, this (of course) requires to configure a _ **DNS server** _ appropriately: - [Wide-Area Bonjour browsing](http://www.dns-sd.org/ClientBrowseOnly.html) - RFC Draft: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cheshire-mdnsext-hybrid-02](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-cheshire-mdnsext-hybrid-02) > _“The bigger problem is opening a port in the firewall”_ Of course, firewalls can potentially block ANY port and service… ---
**Author:** ![wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/wwe/32/72963_2.png) [@wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/wwe)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2024, 9:11pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978/4 "2024-12-03T21:11:10Z")
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**Author:** ![wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/user_avatar/help.nextcloud.com/wwe/32/72963_2.png) [@wwe](https://help.nextcloud.com/u/wwe)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2024, 2:04pm UTC](https://help.nextcloud.com/t/make-it-super-easy-to-connect-to-a-box-without-knowing-its-ip-address/25978/5 "2024-12-09T14:04:13Z")