[svlug] to hosts or not to hosts

[Skip Evans]

Hey all,

Here on our LAN we have a couple of development servers where 
all our client code sits as happy as clams. For code editing 
we just mount them as NFS points and edit away, but web based 
systems we use for project management (dotProject) and issues 
tracking (Mantis), we of course connect through http.

My question is this:

Is it more efficient or desirable to put an entry in

/etc/hosts

like say

192.168.1.100	dotproject.venomouspenguin.com
192.168.1.100	mantis.venomouspenguin.com

for these applications?

I have tried it both ways and see no discernible performance 
increase.

I would guess one advantage would be these apps would still be 
accessible if the connection to the outside went down?

Does it resolve the local apps to a 192.168 internal address 
even without the entries (I would guess not), or does it 
always go outside first?

Does it also depend on the entries in resolv.conf which way ti 
goes (inside or out)?
-- 
====================================
Skip Evans
Big Sky Penguin, LLC
503 S Baldwin St, #1
Madison WI 53703
608.250.2720
http://bigskypenguin.com
------------------------------------
Those of you who believe in
telekinesis, raise my hand.
  -- Kurt Vonnegut