The libbsdnet suite provides functions and documentation for communicating     
with domain name servers, retrieving network host entries from
/etc/hosts or via DNS, converting CIDR network addresses, performing
Hesiod information lookups, retrieving network entries from
/etc/networks, implementing TSIG transaction/request security of
DNS messages, performing name-to-address and address-to-name
translations, and utilizing /etc/resolv.conf for resolver configuration.

Historically, much of the code is derived from the CSRG BSD distributions, such
as the the old BSD gethostbyname() API.  It was previously also maintained by ISC and distributed with BIND
and libbind.  The handoff of the maintainership from ISC to NetBSD happened in July 2013.