Name Service Switch

The Solaris 2.6 operating environment uses standard naming interfaces (for example, gethostbyname) to support multiple naming services (such as NIS, NIS+, and DNS, among others), thereby allowing applications to access data transparently from different services. One instance of this is the Name Service Switch capability in the Solaris 2.6 operating environment, which allows applications to use a UNIX standard naming interface (for example, getxxbyyy interfaces). See the nsswitch.conf(4) man page for more information.