

Some people recommend that you make this file read only so that it will be harder to modify by a malicious program, which there are Hijackers that are known to do this, but there are Hijackers such as CoolWebSearch that add entries to the file regardless of whether or not its read only. It is also recommended that if you use this file that you make periodic backups of it by copying it to another name. Really any text editor can open and modify the HOSTS file.

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You can edit this file either from the cmd prompt using Edit or Notepad on windows or VI on Unix/Linux. If this is the case there will most likely be a sample hosts file called hosts.sam that you can rename to hosts and use as you wish. In Windows machines you may not already have a hosts file. System Folder:Preferences and in the System Folder itself. If there are problems with HOSTS file not working you may want to read this article that goes into much greater detail on Domain Name Resolution on various operating systems:įor reference the HOSTS file is located in the following locations for the listed operating systems:Ĭ:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts Please note that there are ways to change the order that your computer performs Domain Name Resolution. There is no need to reboot or enter another command to start using the entries in the HOSTS file.Īn example HOSTS file can be found here: HOSTS It is also important to note that when you add entries to your HOSTS file they automatically start working. In fact, if there is a mapping for a domain name in a hosts file, then your computer will not even bother querying the DNS servers that are authoritative for that domain, but instead read the IP address directly from the HOSTS file. Normally this is true, but on most operating system the default configuration is that any mappings contained in the Hosts file overrides any information that would be retrieved from a DNS server. You may be wondering why this would work as we said previously that when you need to resolve a domain name to an IP address the device will use its configured DNS servers. You should not use any web notations such as \, /, or You can disable a specific entry by putting a # sign in front of it. If we wanted to map Google to that IP address we would add an entry into our HOSTS file as follows:Ģ16.109.118.69 NOTE: When inputting entries in the hosts file there must be at least one space between the IP address and the domain name. One of the IP addresses for Yahoo is 216.109.118.69. For example, imaging that we wanted to make it so that if you typed in instead of going to Google we would go to In order to do this you would need to find out one of the IP addresses of Yahoo and map to that IP address. The HOSTS file is a text file that contains IP addresses separated by at least once space and then a domain name, with each entry on its own line. This file allows you to create mappings between domain names and IP addresses. Almost every operating system that communicates via TCP/IP, the standard of communication on the Internet, has a file called the HOSTS file. There is another way to resolve domain names without using the Domain Name System, and that is by using your HOSTS file. If you would like a more detailed explanation of the Domain Name System you can find it here: The Domain Name System The device will then open a connection directly to the IP address and perform the desired operation. The DNS server will then query other servers on the Internet that know the correct information for that domain name, and then return to the device the IP address. This is done by the device querying its configured DNS Servers and asking that server what the IP address is for that particular domain name. In order to get that IP address, DNS is used to resolve that domain name to its mapped IP address. Whenever a device connects to another device on the Internet it needs to connect to it via the IP address of the remote device. On almost all operating systems whether they be Apple, Linux, Unix, Netware, or Windows the majority of resolutions from domain names to IP addresses are done through a procedure called DNS.ĭNS stands for Domain Name System and is the standard domain name resolution service used on the Internet. The way these hostnames are resolved to their mapped IP address is called Domain Name Resolution. Therefore when you type a domain name in your program that you wish to connect to, your application must first convert it to an IP address that it will use to connect to. When using the Internet most people connect to web sites, ftp servers or other Internet servers by connecting to a domain name, as in Internet applications, though, do not communicate via domain names, but rather using IP addresses, such as 192.168.1.1.
