The describe_host API method is misleading in that it returns the interface associated with gossip traffic

If the hardware is configured to use separate interfaces for thrift and gossip, the gossip interface will be returned, given the results come out of the ReplicationStrategy eventually.

I understand the approach, but given this is on the API, it effective worthless in situations of host auto discovery via describe_ring from a client. I actually see this as the primary use case of this method - why else would I care about the gossip iface from the client perspective? It's current form should be relegated to JMX only.

At the same time, we should add port information as well.

describe_splits probably has similar issues.

I see the potential cart-before-horse issues here and that this will probably be non-trivial to fix, but I think "give me a set of all the hosts to which I can talk" is pretty important from a client perspective.