Incomputer networking, ahostname (archaicallynodename[1]) is a label that is assigned to a device connected to acomputer network and that is used to identify the device in various forms of electronic communication, such as theWorld Wide Web. Hostnames may be simple names consisting of a single word or phrase, or they may be structured. Each hostname usually has at least one numericnetwork address associated with it for routing packets for performance and other reasons.
Internet hostnames may have appended the name of aDomain Name System[2] (DNS) domain, separated from the host-specific label by a period ("dot"). In the latter form, a hostname is also called adomain name. If the domain name is completely specified, including atop-level domain of the Internet, then the hostname is said to be afully qualified domain name (FQDN). Hostnames that include DNS domains are often stored in the Domain Name System together with theIP addresses of the host they represent for the purpose of mapping the hostname to an address, or the reverse process.
On the Internet, a hostname is a domain name assigned to a host computer. This is usually a combination of the host's local name with its parent domain's name. For example,en.wikipedia.org consists of a local hostname (en) and the domain namewikipedia.org. This kind of hostname is translated into an IP address via the localhosts file, or theDNS resolver. It is possible for a single host computer to have several hostnames but generally, theoperating system of the host prefers to have one hostname that the host uses for itself.
Any domain name can also be a hostname, as long as the restrictions mentioned below are followed. So, for example, bothen.wikipedia.org andwikipedia.org are hostnames because they both have IP addresses assigned to them. A hostname may be a domain name if it is properly organized into the domain name system. A domain name may be a hostname if it has been assigned to an Internet host and associated with the host's IP address.[3]
Hostnames are composed of a sequence oflabels concatenated with dots. For example, "en.wikipedia.org" is a hostname. Each label must be 1 to 63octets long.[2] The entire hostname, including the delimiting dots, has a maximum of 253ASCII characters.[4]
The Internet standards (Request for Comments) for protocols specify that labels may contain only the ASCII lettersa throughz (in a case-insensitive manner), the digits0 through9, and the hyphen-minus character ('-'). The original specification of hostnames required that labels start with an alpha character and not end with a hyphen.[5] However, a subsequent specification permitted hostname labels to start with digits.[6]Internationalized domain names are stored in the Domain Name System as ASCII strings usingPunycode transcription.[7]
While a hostname may not contain other characters, such as the underscore character (_), other DNS names may contain the underscore.[8][9][10] Systems such asDomainKeys andservice records use the underscore as a means to assure that their special character is not confused with hostnames. For example,_http._sctp.www.example.com specifies a service pointer for anSCTP-capable webserver host (www) in the domainexample.com. Notwithstanding the standard,Chrome,Firefox,Internet Explorer,Edge, andSafari allow underscores in hostnames, although cookies in IE do not work correctly if any part of the hostname contains an underscore character.[11]
However, it is valid to attempt to resolve a hostname that consists of an underscore. E.g._.example.com. This is used by RFC 7816 to reduce the amount of information that is made available to intermediate DNS servers during an iterative query.[12] The Query Name Minimisation feature is enabled by default inBIND 9.14.0.[13]
The hostnameen.wikipedia.org is composed of the DNS labelsen (hostname or leaf domain),wikipedia (second-level domain), andorg (top-level domain). Labels such as2600 and3abc may be used in hostnames, but-hi-,_hi_, and*hi* are invalid.
A hostname is considered to be a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) when all labels up to and including the top-level domain name (TLD) are specified. The hostnameen.wikipedia.org terminates with the top-level domainorg and is thus fully qualified. Depending on the operating system DNS software implementation, an unqualified hostname may be automatically combined with a default domain name configured into the system in order to complete the fully qualified domain name. As an example, a student atMIT may be able to send mail to "joe@csail" and have it automatically qualified by the mail system to be sent tojoe
csail.mit.edu.
General guidelines on choosing a good hostname are outlined in RFC 1178.[14]
saturn andjupiter may be the hostnames of two devices connected to a network namedPC. WithinPC, the devices are addressed by their hostnames. The domain names of the devices aresaturn.PC andjupiter.PC, respectively. IfPC is registered as a second-level domain name in the Internet, e.g., asPC.net, the hosts may be addressed by the fully qualified domain namessaturn.PC.net andjupiter.PC.net.