Network services

Name-to-address mapping

The name-to-address mapping feature allows an application to obtain the address of a service on a specified machine in a transport-independent manner. The name-to-address mapping feature consists of the following routines:

netdir_getbyname
netdir_getbyaddr
netdir_free
netdir_mergeaddr
taddr2uaddr
uaddr2taddr
netdir_options

Each function takes a pointer to a netconfig structure and returns a list of service and host name addresses over a given transport provider.

The libraries are:

tcpip.so: Contains the name-to-address mapping routines for the Internet protocol suite.
straddr.so: Contains the name-to-address mapping routines for any protocol that accepts strings as addresses. ISO and the loopback protocols are examples.

The routines are described below in ``The name-to-address mapping libraries'', and on the netdir(3N) manual page. The netconfig structure is described on the netconfig(4bnu) manual page.