Differences between Bonjour/Avahi/People-Nearby protocols

Question

I recently discovered, through Ubuntu's empathy im client, that exists a protocol that enables the user to talk with anyone on his actual local network. It seems empathy calls this service "People Nearby" and Windows "People Near Me".

After some research I discovered more information: it seems the "protocol" is called Avahi (or Bonjour/Salut(?) by Apple) and permits a user to connect to users, printers and files on the network.

My questions:

1. Bonjour, Avahi, people nearby, people nearby... are these things different names for the same thing, i.e. to connect to "things" (users/printers/files) on the same network? Are these different implementations of Zeroconf?
2. Which IM support this kind of protocol? AIM, Trillian and Empathy support it, am I right? Which of them are usable on a smartphone (Android)? I think Trillian does and WiChat too but only for iOS.
3. Is there an Android app that implements a Bonjour's or Avahi's service for Instant Messaging?

Dispread

Cross-posted the question on Ask Ubuntu. – Castle

Answer 1

Pidgin (available for windows/mac os/linux/bsd) also supports this, and the nokia n900 (which runs maemo) also supports avahi. There are also other clients for each platform (adium being the for-mac version of pidgin).

Avahi is an open source implementation for unix-like OSs (including linux and some BSDs). Bonjour is also an open source implementation for Windows and Mac OS X by Apple.

Avahi and bonjour interact perfectly, being two implementations of the same protocol. I frequently chat between maemo/linux/mac using this combination.

Apospory

Answer 2

Bonjour and Avahi are both implementations of IETF Zeroconf (AutoIP, multicast-DNS-based service announcement/discovery and multicast-DNS-based local DNS name resolution). Bonjour is the Apple name for Zeroconf (essentially).

Trident