From owner-nanog@merit.edu Mon Oct 24 15:33:02 2005 Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 13:31:17 -0700 Subject: Re: What is multihoming was (design of a real routing v. endpoint id seperation)
Stephen Sprunk wrote: [snip]
Other people use this term in very different ways. To some people it means using having multiple IP addresses bound to a single network interface. To others it means multiple websites on one server.
That is virtual hosting in a NANOG context. Some undereducated MCSEs might call it multihoming, but let's not endorse that here.
Unfortunately, this is a common and "standards blessed" way to refer to any host with multiple interfaces/addresses (real or virtual). For example, from the "Terminology" section, 1.1.3, of RFC1122, "Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Communication Layers," says,
Multihomed A host is said to be multihomed if it has multiple IP addresses. For a discussion of multihoming, see Section 3.3.4 below.
*sigh* Multi-homing simply means 'having external connections to more than one network' -- be it a network with multiple, disjoint, ingress/egress paths, or a host with interfaces (real or virtual) on distinct LAN subnets (even if those subnets are agregated into a single net somewhere upstream. A host with multiple adresses utilizing the _same_ netblock/netmask _should_ _not_ be called multi-homed (because there is only one path to that host), it is simply a single-homed host with multiple identities. might be called "poly-ip-any" or some such. <grin>