Since the MIHF allows the storage of the IP address of the Link SAPs, the Link SAPs attached to the MIHF can be on the same machine or not, i.e., the Link SAPs can be local or remote.

Although the communications are made between two different machines, to the MIHF the remote Link SAP is always seen as a local entity and therefore, the messages received from local and remote Link SAPs are processed equally. This behaviour is possible because ODTONE uses sockets to provide local communications.