Solaris 8 Administrator's Guide

Chapter 2. Building Solaris Networks

The basis of providing modern network services rests with TCP/IP and the Internet. In this chapter,you’ll learn fundamental networking principles, such as the structure of IP addresses, hostname and address resolution, and practical architectures for building Solaris networks. I examine how network interface devices are supported by Solaris, and review the installation and configuration of basic TCP/IP network services (including the Internet services daemon, inetd ). I’ll demonstrate the basic principles of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and related protocols by examining the contents of actual packets being transferred between Solaris hosts.

System Concepts

Before I begin designing networks, I need to consider individual hosts and their characteristics. A bad network design often results from an unplanned expansion of hosts that grows over the years to consume a Class C or Class B subnet, with little apparent direction. Understanding what hostnames, domain names, naming services, and IP addresses are will assist in better managment of the long-term growth of your network.

A host is an individual system running Solaris. It must be uniquely identified on the network on which it resides, which in turn uniquely identifies it on the Internet, since each Internet domain name is unique. Thus, while there may be many hosts called foxy in networks worldwide, there will be only one host called foxy allowed in each domain. This prevents foxy.savetheanimals.com ...