Sams Teach Yourself TCP/IP in 24 Hours, Third Edition

Name Resolution Using Hosts Files

As you learned earlier in this hour, a hosts file is a file containing a table that associates hostnames to IP addresses. Hostname resolution was developed before the more sophisticated DNS name resolution, but hostname resolution is still used on some networks, especially smaller networks that do not require the overhead and expense of operating DNS. Some networks might use a hosts file for local lookups and still use DNS for remote queries, such as lookup for Internet access.

Configuring hostname resolution on a small network is usually very simple. Operating systems that support TCP/IP recognize the hosts file and use it for name resolution with little or no intervention from the user. The details for configuring ...