IP aliasing is associating more than one
IP address
An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface i ...
to a
network interface. With this, one node on a
network can have multiple connections to a network, each serving a different purpose.
According to the Linux Kernel documentation,
In the
Linux
Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...
kernel, it was first implemented by Juan José Ciarlante in 1995. On
Solaris
Solaris is the Latin word for sun.
It may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film
* ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem
** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg
** ''Sol ...
IP aliasing was called logical network interface and was first available in Solaris 2.5 in 1995. It has also been possible in Microsoft
Windows NT
Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...
since (at least)
Windows NT 3.51,
released in 1995.
IP aliasing can be used to provide multiple network addresses on a single physical interface. This demonstrates using IP version 4 addresses only. One reason for using this could be to make a computer look as though it is multiple computers, so for example you could have one server that is acting as both a gateway (router) and a DHCP server and DNS using three different IP addresses, perhaps with a future plan to use a hardware router and to move the functionality to separate DNS and DHCP servers. Or indeed the opposite you could decide to replace the three different hardware devices with a single server to reduce the administration overhead. In this case you can have three different addresses which are all on the same computer without having to install many physical network interfaces. Another reason to use IP aliasing could be to have the computer on two different logical network subnets whilst using a single physical interface.
References
Internet architecture
{{compu-network-stub