[plug] Another network question

[Derek Fountain]

> It's a linux thing as much as a general networking thing. Basically,
> what your're doing is creating a second "virtual" network interface
> attached to the real interface, that can have a different IP address
> etc. It is a way of having multiple virtual network interfaces on a
> single physical interface (and medium).

OK, that all makes sense, but I'm still not sure about the "why". The original 
article I was reading is here:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/05/29/netcat.html

He isn't too clear on why creating an alias is a good idea. He just suggests 
he might break 127.0.0.1 if he doesn't do so.

Why? What's he achieving (or what risk is he nulifying) by creating those 
aliases?

-- 
"...our desktop is falling behind stability-wise and feature wise to KDE 
...when I went to Mexico in December to the facility where we launched gnome, 
they had all switched to KDE3." - Miguel de Icaza, March 2003