Assuming that download.example.com is round-robined to a bunch of machines, but I only want to use some of them and not others (e.g. because some are close to me or fast and others not), it would be very useful to have an option to overide the results of gethostbyname and define the IP-addresses to be used. Like wget --use-ips 10.11.12.13 33.44.55.66 88.99.100.200 http://download.example.com/
Root can do that by messing up /etc/hosts, but non-root users can't. And using 'wget <IP-address>/' doesn't work with virtual servers because they expect a particular fqdn in the request. For some round-robined world-wide-mirrored sites, like some distibution mirrors, 'wget fqdn' can get you downloading stuff from the other end of the world while there is a fast mirror next door to you. Thus, RFE. Z
