Internet address conflict between namespace and local.boot file

I have an Ivory machine.

It used to be hooked to the internet, as one of the many machines of a 
research institute.
When FEP is booted, it reads the local.boot file which contains in 
particular the following two lines:
Set Network Address CHAOS|401
Set Network Address Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx
where  xxx.xxx.x.xx is (was) a valid internet address within the quoted 
research institute.
Then FEP loads a complete world and Lisp starts.
The herald says that the machine is called MyIvory.
Looking at the namespace of the site one can edit the host MyIvory 
(which is the unique Symbolics around) and
check  that its internet address is indeed declared as xxx.xxx.x;xx 
(the same as before).

Now the machine is no longer located in a research institute but it is 
at home.
Since the address  xxx.xxx.x;xx  was making no sense, I tried to change 
it.
The whole thing became nightmarish...

If I just edit the namespace of the host MyIvory and replace 
xxx.xxx.x.xx by a local address, for instance 10.0.0.1,
I have the following problem:
when I reboot the machine, FEP still reads the same local.boot file, 
which in particular
contains the command Set Network Address Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx
although the namespace of MyIvory refers now to 10.0.0.1
When Lisp appears, the herald has changed: the name of the machine is 
no longer MyIvory but
Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx, so that the machine no longer recognizes itself.
Actually if you try a Show Herald MyIvory, the machine is not found.
You have to type Show Herald Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx
Also you get a strange declaration saying that the namespace 
namespace-name has become unloaded.
Worse, several program requiring a password (like Macsyma)  no longer 
work (of course, the password was
given for MyIvory but the same machine now recognizes itself as 
Internet|xxx.xxx.x;xx)
Since the command Set Network Address Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx  given in 
the hello.boot file seemed strange I  then decided to
remove it manually (leaving only Set Network Address CHAOS|401 although 
there is no Chaosnet around...) Then it became even
worse because FEP could not complete its initialization process: 
although the address xxx.xxx.x.xx no longer exists, it seems that it 
has to be
given in the hello.boot file!
I could fortunately restart the FEP by typing manually the command Set 
Network Address Internet|xxx.xxx.x.xx

Well I am back to my starting point (after hours and hours...)
I changed the hello.boot file back to its previous state (so that it 
contains the line setting its network address to xxx.xxx.x.xx) and
edit the namespace host MyIvory so that its address is again given as 
xxx.xxx.x.xx. Now the machine recognizes itself and, after rebooting,
the name appears as MyIvory

End of the story...

First of all it is strange that the machine learns its own name via the 
reading of an internet address that should appear both
in the local.boot file and in the namespace of the machine itself (one 
of the host objects).
I could not find a place, in the whole documentation, which would tell 
me how a machine learns its own name!
I am certainly missing something....?

In any case, this machine is now at home. I would like to connect it 
via an ethernet  cable to an external small unix workstation,
and to a local private network but, for so doing,  I need somehow to 
change the internet adress of the Ivory.
  Since changing its characteristics by hand in the namespace (via a 
Select Activity Namespace Editor)  leads to
internal schizophrenic problems (non recognition of one's own 
identity...) I do not know how to do it.
I could certainly change this again in the namespace and simultaneously 
edit the  local.boot file  typing  a command
of the kind Set Network Address a-local-internet-number, but, somehow, 
this looks strange.
It is probably not the right way of doing things...

Can you help ?

Robert Coquereaux