Unique number generator?

[Michael I. Bushnell]

In article <2093 at stpstn.UUCP> aad at stpstn.UUCP (Anthony A. Datri) writes:
>In article <5412 at csli.STANFORD.EDU> gandalf at csli.stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner) writes:
>>Since the hostid is unique, and since there shouldn't be an upper limit to
>>those numbers, just use
>
>Don't all MicrovaxII's have the same hostid?

Huh???? Not a chance.  They all have SIMILAR system ID registers, but
that is a very different thing.  The hostid is a variable maintained
by the kernel, very analogous to the hostname.  It is set by sethostid
and read by gethostid.  You get 32 bits of data.  It is intended that
this be the "canonical" Internet address for the machine.  Gateways
should choose their most "external" address.  

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