I would like to thank all who responded to my question.  I appreciate your
time and trouble in responding.  I appologize for leaving out two important
facts - 1) we cannot use DNS (we are prohibited from using it), and 2) we
are in a routered mess containg many networks connected by leased lines and
in some cases over other people's networks (which even the other people
don't have control of).  I don't want to even think about how deep the
encapsulation is in some places.
 
This is a U.S. Navy network.  The HP 3000 systems are inside a firewall.
For a number of reasons the Navy wishes to not list these systems in the DNS
located within the firewall.  The network has evolved over the course of
twelve years from what started as systems linked via DS, then later NS on
"Classic" systems.  Thus, we have been using NMMGR and NSDIR and have a
maintenance nightmare.  We now have the option of switching the iX 5.0
systems over to using HOSTS.NET.SYS if we can "make a good case for doing so."
 
It would appear that using HOSTS.NET.SYS would be the easiest to deal with
as it is human-readable and it appears that we could create just one file
and copy it to all the iX 5.0 systems.  I presume we could also download it
to our HQ PC's as the WRQNET HOSTS file.
 
I guess the real question is whether there are performance issues or
"gotcha's" we might face if we got the HOSTS.NET.SYS route and remove the
NSDIR entries.
 
What do you think?
 
 
John
--------------------------------------------------------------
John Korb                            email: [log in to unmask]
Innovative Software Solutions, Inc.
 
The thoughts, comments, and opinions expressed herein are mine
and do not reflect those of my employer(s), or anyone else.