v had also introduced a simple distributed "name service". the name service stored "well known" character names representing various objects in a distributed v system, for instance "2nd floor laser printer". applications could ask the name server for objects by name, and would be handed back an identifier that would allow them to interact with that object. the name service was not itself a separate server, and was managed by code in the kernel itself. contrast this with the full-blown "name server" under the spring operating system, which not only knew about objects inside the system, but was also used by other servers on the system to translate their private names – file names and ip addresses for instance.