Disable transmitting Bonjour service advertisements on Mac

Referenced: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3789

Disable transmitting Bonjour service advertisements. You can use this advanced article if you are a network administrator who needs to disable Bonjour advertising service without disabling Bonjour queries and DNS.

Products Affected

Bonjour, Mac OS X 10.6, Bonjour

Important: Follow these steps carefully. A malformed or problematic mDNSResponder.plist file may prevent your Mac from starting up. As a precaution, perform a full backup of your system with Time Machine.

1. Make a back up copy of the mDNSResponder.plist file as a precaution.
2. Open the mDNSResponder.plist file in Terminal using your preferred text editor. Here is a sample command:
   sudo nano "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist"
   
3. Add "<string>-NoMulticastAdvertisements</string>" to the array in the "ProgramArguments" section.
   
   In other words:
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
4.    <array>
5.        <string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
6.        <string>-launchd</string>
7.    </array>
8. 
   becomes...
      <key>ProgramArguments</key>
9.    <array>
10.        <string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
11.        <string>-launchd</string>
12.     <string>-NoMulticastAdvertisements</string>
13.    </array>

1. Save the file.
   
   Important: If you edited the file using emacs, you must remove the emacs backup file (the file with a tilde at the end of the name, "/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist~") or your Mac will not start up.
   
2. Restart your Mac.

   or

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

Additional Information

Prior to Mac OS X v10.6, the only way for a network administrator to disable Bonjour advertising of services was to completely disable the mDNSResponder process, which also disabled Bonjour discovery of services (such as discovering network printers).