hosts file?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Q
  • Start date Start date
The Hosts file (and it's cousin, LMHosts) is used to provide static
translation between IP addresses and "user-friendly" names. For instance, an
entry would look something like this:

192.168.1.3 Server01 #main office server

When you type in server01 (from an address bar and/or many other places),
your computer would read the hosts file, then it would know that server01 is
really at 192.168.1.3 - it now knows where to find the machine. The reason
this is needed is that IP Addresses are computer friendly, but not so much
user friendly - people like words, computer like numbers.

Hosts files work fine if the network is small, and doesn't change often (In
fact, all name resolution on the Internet used to be handled by hosts
files). As networks grow however, hosts file become unmanageable (who has
time to change the entries every a new static IP address is added - and then
make those changes across an enterprise?!).

The replacement for the hosts file is DNS. DNS provides the same service (IP
Address to friendly-name translation), but it is distributed across many
machines - there no longer has to be one file that keeps track of all IP
Address to name resolutions (could you imagine how large that would be if it
were to keep track of every single Internet address in use in the public
domain?) - all the entries are spread across many, many machines, and they
update dynamically. DNS is easier to manage, and more fault-tolerant.

As far as the file on your machines goes, you can leave it there, as it's
not provid

I hope this provides some clarification.

Patrick Pitre
 
Hi, John.

The Hosts file is kinda like a Speed Dialer. If the site you are trying to
reach is in Hosts, then IE doesn't have to look it up in DNS (the phone
book). If you have a wrong or out-of-date entry in Hosts, though, you might
hit a dead end and never reach the site you are looking for.

RC
 
from the wonderful said:
Hi, John.

The Hosts file is kinda like a Speed Dialer. If the site you are trying to
reach is in Hosts, then IE doesn't have to look it up in DNS (the phone
book). If you have a wrong or out-of-date entry in Hosts, though, you might
hit a dead end and never reach the site you are looking for.
Click to expand...

Although sometimes putting a wrong entry in there (for doubleclick.net
for instance) is a good way of avoiding spamvertising. btw, did WinXP
fix the dreadful performance problem that Win2k had when there were a
lot of entries in Hosts? (ISTR that with 500 or 100 entries, the whole
Win2k machine would grind to a near halt).
 
from the wonderful said:
Hi, GSV.

Actually, I don't know much about Hosts. I never use it. ;^}
Click to expand...

I've tried, but on Win2k it was such a pigs ear that I gave up (except
for a very few select entries). Used to be fairly sane on Win9x.
 
I've got the ones from mvps.org and they seem to work. I noticed that at
some sites the status bar never says 'done', so there's some sort of
problem, but if it affects performance any, I've not noticed. Is the
problem on 2K universal or just on some computers?

It is impossible to tell whether "GSV Three Minds in a Can"
 
from the wonderful said:
I've got the ones from mvps.org and they seem to work. I noticed that at
some sites the status bar never says 'done', so there's some sort of
problem, but if it affects performance any, I've not noticed. Is the
problem on 2K universal or just on some computers?
Click to expand...

It happened on all the ones I tried, and it was referenced on the web as
a known problem - for some reason having a large Hosts (or LMHosts?)
file caused some service in Win2k to run almost all the time (maybe
checking the Hosts list was still valid, or something dumb?)
 
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