assign IP address to NIC

[Lan Xue <lanxue@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I was wondering how does the Linux kernel assign IP addresses to NICs
within the localhost. Say
a host have multiple NICs, and it has got multiple IP addresses, how to
map/bind the IP address to the corresponding adapter?   What
are the APIs to achieve that? Basically, it's sth that ifconfig does
internally...

Thanks,

Lan