This is an implementation of lookupd - name service switch daemon. It gives an ability to use IPC model for different lookup operations (just like nsswitch, but all requests are processed by lookupd daemon), which in turn makes system-wide caching possible. Besides, unlike the nsswitch lookupd can use persistent connections and different other optimizations. As current nsswitch implementation, lookupd is also based on plugins, which are a bit different from standard nss_* plugins such as nss_ldap, but they are easy to port. Files and dns plugins are installed by default and lookupd_ldap module can be found in ports. Lookupd should be plugged into the current FreeBSD nsswitch implementation using a standard module - nss_lookupd.so. WWW: http://www.sfedu.ru/~bushman/lookupd/