Hi.

> Can anyone explain or point me to a reference on why Slack needs DNS IPs
> and Win does not.

Slack don't need DNS IPs. All you have to do is configure /etc/rc.d
rc.inet1.conf.

See my configuration:

# Config information for eth0:
IPADDR[0]=""
NETMASK[0]=""
USE_DHCP[0]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[0]=""

This enable DHCP on your network card, so this way you pick an IP
automatically.

> Is NAT and DNS the same thing (roughly speaking?)
Nop. NAT (Network Address Translation) is used many times in gateways to
masquerade internal ips (private ips) to the external gateway's ip and vice
versa, so that internall machines have Internet connection.
DNS (Domain Name System) is used to convert internet addresses
(www.domain.com) to IP addresses (213.22.132.65). It's diferent things.


Regards,
Nuno Paquete.