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From: stine@SPARTA.COM (Robert Havens Stine)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Multihoming
Message-ID: <8910131313.AA21581@Heisenberg.sparta.com>
Date: 13 Oct 89 13:13:45 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 28


   >>Addresses are identifiers that are used to label where messages can be
   >>sent or received.  An IP address identifies a host's network
   >>interface.  A host may have several network interfaces.

 >And it could even have several IP addresses on the *same* network interface....

Right.  There's a mapping between the subnet and the internet layers.
IP addresses still, in some sense, are handles for identifying
datagram sources and sinks for users of the internet service.

   >>Like IP addresses, host names are identifiers.  They are used to label
   >>(surprise!) hosts.  A host may have several host names.
   >>
   >>To use a network, a mapping must be made from host name to IP
   >>address(es).  Hence the DNS.

 >This is news to me at least. It is my understanding that if you use the
 >DNS, there can only be one host name. CNAMES records of course, but only
 >one ``true" name...

Jeez! What are the other "untrue" names? Meaningless scribbles?
Mispronunciations?

Of course there are varieties of names, some of which may be special
in some way.  DNS provides a mapping between names and addresses.

- Bob