The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) implements an Internet name server for BSD-derived operating systems. The BIND consists of a server (or ``daemon'') called named and a resolver library. A name server is a network service that enables clients to name resources or objects and share this information with other objects in the network. This in effect is a distributed data base system for objects in a computer network. The BIND server runs in the background, servicing queries on a well known network port. The standard port for UDP and TCP is specified in /etc/services. The resolver is a set of routines residing in a system library that provides the interface that programs can use to access the domain name services.
BIND is fully integrated into BSD (4.3 and later releases) network programs for use in storing and retrieving host names and address. The system administrator can configure the system to use BIND as a replacement to the older host table lookup of information in the network hosts file /etc/hosts. The default configuration for BSD uses BIND.