Changing Name Resolution Order
Name resolution is how your system figures out the actual IP address for host.xyz.com (and vice-versa). For most Unix systems, that function is provided by “named” and the configuration files are /etc/resolv.conf, named.conf, and perhaps nsswitch.conf. While you’ll find a resolv.conf and even a named.conf on Mac OS X, you won’t find named in the process list. Instead, MacOSX has a neat resolver capability controlled by “lookupd”.