Avahi is a technology which facilitates service discovery on a local network via the mDNS/DNS-SD protocol suite. In theory, this enables you to plug your computer into a network and instantly be able to view other people who you can chat with, find printers to print to or find files being shared. Avahi also allows your computer to advertise running network services. Avahi implements the Zeroconf specification, mDNS, DNS-SD and RFC 3927/IPv4LL. It also uses D-Bus. Compatible technology is found in Bonjour/mDNSResponder. By the way, Avahi is the Malagasy name and scientific Latin name of a genus of woolly lemur,