Hostname

A hostname (sometimes also, a sitename) is the exceptional name by which a network-attached device (which could consist of a laptop or computer, file server, network storage device, fax machine, copier, cable modem, etc.) is recognized on a network. The hostname is utilized to identify a specific host in various forms of electronic communication like the Globe Wide Internet, e-mail or Usenet.

Online, the terms "hostname" and "domain name" are usually used interchangeably, but you will discover subtle technical variations among them.

Hostnames are employed by several naming systems, NIS, DNS, SMB, etc., and so the which means on the word hostname will vary based on naming system in question, which in turn varies by sort of network. A hostname meaningful to a Microsoft NetBIOS workgroup might be an invalid World wide web hostname. When presented having a hostname and no context, it really is generally protected to assume that the network could be the Online and DNS is definitely the hostname's naming program.

Host names are commonly employed in an administrative capacity and may possibly appear in computer system browser lists, active directory lists, IP address to hostname resolutions, e mail headers, and so on. They may be human-readable nick-names, which ultimately correspond to special network hardware MAC addresses. In some situations the host name might contain embedded domain names and/or places, non-dotted IP addresses, and so on.

On a uncomplicated local place network, a hostname is usually a single word: as an example, an organization's CVS server could be named "cvs" or "server-1".

RFC

• RFC 952 - "DoD Internet host table specification."
• RFC 1034 - "DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS AND FACILITIES" (In particular, section 3.5)
• RFC 1035 - "DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION" (In particular, section 2.3.1)
• RFC 1123 - "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support."
• RFC 1178 - "Choosing a Name for Your Computer"
• RFC 3696 - "Application Techniques for Checking and Transformation of Names"

This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

Domain names

A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control online. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures in the Domain Name Technique (DNS).

Domain names are utilized in a variety of networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name represents an Online Protocol (IP) resource, for instance a private pc utilised to access the world wide web, a server laptop or computer hosting a internet site, or the web website itself or any other service communicated by way of the internet.

Domain names are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of your DNS root domain, which is nameless. The first-level set of domain names would be the top-level domains (TLDs), which includes the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), for example the prominent domains com, net and org, as well as the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains within the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that happen to be usually open for reservation by end-users who wish to connect neighborhood place networks towards the Internet, generate other publicly accessible World-wide-web resources or run web web pages. The registration of these domain names is typically administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

Goal

Domain names serve as humanly-memorable names for World-wide-web participants, like computer systems, networks, and services. A domain name represents an Net Protocol (IP) resource. Individual World-wide-web host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames would be the leaf labels inside the domain name system commonly with no additional subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a element in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Net resources such as web websites (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).

Domain names are also applied as very simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used within the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the DomainKeys employed to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in numerous other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

An essential function of domain names will be to give easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed World wide web resources. This abstraction will allow any resource to become moved to a unique physical place within the address topology in the network, globally or locally in an intranet. Such a move normally calls for altering the IP address of a resource as well as the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

Domain names are usually referred to basically as domains and domain name registrants are often known as domain owners, while domain name registration with a registrar doesn't confer any legal ownership from the domain name, only an exclusive correct of use.

The use of domain names in commerce may well subject them to trademark law. In 2010, the amount of active domains reached 196 million.

Background

The practice of employing a name as a simple memorable abstraction of a host's numerical address on a computer network dates back towards the ARPANET era, just before the advent of today's commercial World-wide-web. In the early network, each laptop or computer on the network retrieved the hosts file (host.txt) from a computer system at SRI (now SRI International). which mapped pc host names to numerical addresses. The fast growth of the network created it impossible to preserve a centrally organized hostname registry and in 1983 the Domain Name Technique was introduced on the ARPANET and published by the net Engineering Activity Force as RFC 882 and RFC 883.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.