Clarification on roles of networking components.

[Matthew Flaschen]

Simon Slater wrote:
> 	Is there any overlap in the functions of NIS, bind and LDAP?  Or are
> these mutually exclusive?

I would be surprised if you needed either NIS or LDAP for a SOHO
network.  However, I would say NIS and LDAP are similar, but bind (i.e.
DNS) serves a fundamentally different purpose.

> 	When using DHCP, is /etc/hosts redundant?

Well, you won't /need/ to use it.  You configure a server to assign IPs
(DHCP) and automatically tell other computers which computer maps to
which IPs (DNS).

> 	What is the optimal way to resolve names in a small but growing
> network?

Depends how small, of course.  But I would think a simple DNS/DHCP
server like dnsmasq is reasonable for such a network.  See
http://www.linux.com/articles/149040 for a good start.

Matt Flaschen