Acquiring a physical address. When a computer executes instructions, it requires a physical memory, storage or network node address to reference the actual hardware. For ease of recognition, names are often initially used to identify such objects, but have to be substituted with the "real" machine addresses in order to perform the actual operation. Machine addresses are derived using table lookups and algorithms. The terms "address resolution" and "name resolution" are synonymous.

Name to IP to Ethernet
In a TCP/IP network, there are two address resolutions. The first is the conversion from a domain and host name into an IP address (see DNS). The second is from the IP address to the Ethernet address (see ARP). See ARP, resolve, name resolution and DNS.