>> Applications (at least on Linux) have no idea what device they are using. They just request a connection to an IP and it's the kernels job to route that request correctly.

> This is a bad idea. I want to connect the application to the device I think it should use. It shouldn't be able to find anything I don't tell it about.

Telling applications about resources is literally what the operating system is for. Both Linux and Windows let you do what you want.