Knowledge Base

INFO: Host Name May Map to Multiple IP Addresses

Article ID: 110703

Article Last Modified on 10/17/1999


APPLIES TO


This article was previously published under Q110703

SUMMARY

The sockets function gethostname() returns a string that identifies the name of the local host. Each host has only one "official" name, regardless of how many IP addresses it has, but there may be several "aliases" for the host.

In TCP/IP, there is not a one-to-one mapping between host name and IP address. The mapping is one-to-many: one host name can have multiple IP addresses.

The sockets function getsockname() returns the sockaddr that the socket is bound to.

Keywords: kbinfo kbwinsock kbapi kbnetwork KB110703