It's really up to the application software to handle multiple IP
addresses for a single host. Microsoft's IE, for example, tries the
first IP address in the list. If that IP doesn't repond in the time out
period, it then tries the next one, and so on. Other programs handle
things differently. Some programs remember which IP addresses worked or
didn't and continue to use or ignore those addresses. Some, like
Netscape Navigator, will periodically retry the failing IP addresses to
see if they've come back online. Some programs don't support multiple IP
addresses and just use the first or last IP in the list.

I don't know that there's much you can do as far as setup, other than
perhaps setting timeout values. Applications selecting a non-optimal
server is a common problem when systems use multiple IP addresses for
load balancing or failover. More sophisticated systems use dedicated
load balancing and failover software in front of the servers to solve
that problem.

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is a specific implementation of
DNS, widely used on UNIX and UNIX-like systems. The resolver is included
with BIND. More info on BIND can be had from:

http://www.isc.org/products/BIND

--
John