What Is the Hosts File?

The Hosts document (“hosts.Txt”) is a simple-textual content report that incorporates a listing of Host Names and their corresponding IP addresses. It is basically a Database of Domains this is utilized by the running gadget for identifying and finding a bunch in an IP Network.

What Does Hosts File Mean?

The forerunner of the Internet, the ARPANEt, did no longer have a dispensed domain call Database for the reason that number of hosts then become only a few. But as the recogNition of the Internet increased, the idea of the hosts.Txt Record eMerged because of the want to collect in a handy area all of the records about the different hosts in a commUnity.

The layout specification of the hosts report is described in RFC 952. The hosts File consists of one or extra lines of textual content, wherein each line starts with the IP address observed with the aid of one or more host names separated with the aid of a space. The record may additionally incorporate Feedback, which begin with a hash sign (#); clean lines are omitted.

The rigid and centralized nature of the hosts file proved complex, however; to address this issue, the allotted Domain Name System became created.