This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

NETWORKS(5)                 BSD File Formats Manual                NETWORKS(5)

NAME
     networks -- network name data base

DESCRIPTION
     The networks file contains information regarding the known networks which comprise the DARPA Internet.
     For each network a single line should be present with the following information:

           official network name
           network number
           aliases

     Items are separated by any number of blanks and/or tab characters.  A ``#'' indicates the beginning of
     a comment; characters up to the end of the line are not interpreted by routines which search the file.
     This file is normally created from the official network data base maintained at the Network Information
     Control Center (NIC), though local changes may be required to bring it up to date regarding unofficial
     aliases and/or unknown networks.

     Network number may be specified in the conventional ``.''  (dot) notation using the inet_network(3)
     routine from the Internet address manipulation library, inet(3).  Network names may contain any print-able printable
     able character other than a field delimiter, newline, or comment character.

INTERACTION WITH DIRECTORY SERVICES
     Processes generally find network records using one of the getnetent(3) family of functions.  On Mac OS
     X, these functions interact with the DirectoryService(8) daemon, which reads the /etc/networks file as
     well as searching other directory information services to determine network name and address informa-tion. information.
     tion.

FILES
     /etc/networks

SEE ALSO
     getnetent(3), DirectoryService(8)

HISTORY
     The networks file format appeared in 4.2BSD.

4.2 Berkeley Distribution        June 5, 1993        4.2 Berkeley Distribution