What does it mean to bind three IP addresses to the same network adapter?

Answer 1

Binding an IP to an adapter means that the ethernet adapter will respond to the address (es) bound to it.

IE. if you have three public IP addresses and one server you can tell the server to "listen" to all three IP's and respond accordingly .

Its very common in "shared" hosting configurations to have multiple IP's "bound" to the same physical adapter. Those IPs can then be pointed to three different websites on the same system.

In fact you can add "multiple" IPs to your XP system by clicking on the network adapter (in Network connections), go to properties, click on TCP/IP settings. If you click the "advanced" tab you can add multiple IP addresses (as well as subnets). You also can add multiple gateway addresses etc. All of these will become "bound" to the ONE adapter and you can use ANY of those IP's the system will work as long as there is another system connected using that "range" of IP's.

This is easier in LINUX (a lot of things are) in that you can add as many IP's to a single adapter as you want.
http://www.usefulutilities.com/support/technote/2l.html

Binding is simply adding another IP to the same physical adapter. You can search for "bind ip address" to see how with your OS.