Talk:Hostname

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

It's very similar to Domain name

There is, in fact, no distinction between a hostname and domain name from the perspective of DNS. A hostname is merely a domain name assigned to a host... and actually thus has special naming rules.

I'm about to update the page to reflect this. Fudoreaper 22:07, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] External links

The Scarcity link seems unnecessary. Hostnames are not scarce at all, since there are so many of them. Domain names might be scarce, but the article's not going to work with your current internet provider and the domain name is going to kick you off of your server for a dollar on mydomain.com

[edit] Hostname vs Host name vs Domain name

In terminology adopted by GNU (http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Host-Identification.html), from the DNS perspective, host name is the FQDN (fully qualified domain name). FQDN consists of a hostname, then a period, then a domain name. It gives an example: chicken.ai.mit.edu. chicken is the hostname, ai.mit.edu is the domain name, chicken.ai.mit.edu is the host name aka FQDN. minglai July 7, 2006

[edit] Host Name: www and host names like encarta

I don't get it what is this part of the domain name: http://[www].example.com ? I think it may be like a server name for a particular company like http://[encarta].msn.com I have my own site so I'll write an example text like what appears in the url address the bold is what I see before "webhoster" ( webhoster is an example): http://[mysite].webhoster.com So why can't it be : http:// www.mysite.webhoster.com Anyone have an answer —Preceding unsigned comment added by Melab (talk • contribs) 00:13, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dash or Minus Sign or Hyphen?

In the article it says: "hostname labels can only be made up of the ASCII letters 'a' through 'z' (case-insensitive), the digits '0' through '9', and the hyphen". However, after looking up RFC 952, we learn that it is in fact a "minus sign", and after looking up hyphen we learn that they are not one of the same, and apparently it's not a dash either. So which is it? --Hm2k (talk) 20:57, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I've answered this (duplicate) question on the Talk:Domain name page. Wrs1864 (talk) 21:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)


[edit] What is a hostname versus what's not a hostname? (unclear wording)

The article provides an explanation for what is a hostname versus what isn't. The text reads,

The domain name "pmtpa.wikimedia.org" is not a hostname since it does not have an IP address, but "rr.pmtpa.wikimedia.org" is a hostname. All hostnames are domain names, but not all domain names are hostnames.

Now, I pinged both example hostnames, and the first doesn't exist in DNS while the second does - but this wording is very unclear to people who might not understand how to check for themselves. As an example, it's very poor - I'm just uncertain as to how to reword it to make the most sense whilst still holding the same meaning as the current text. Anybody have any suggestions they can make to improve the clarity of the wording? Christopher (talk) 21:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)