hosts file

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 07:52:58 +0000

I run a personal web page mainly for private use of file transfers, as such I hope I am not pointing out the blatantly obvious to you Web Admins but I'd like to mention the 'hosts' file on every local computer which can be very handy.

Many people know a little about DNS and web address translation, this all happens transparently in the background, a human readable web address gets converted into an IP address that the computer understands .

The hosts file is your local DNS translation file which generally is looked at by computers before an address is sent to a DNS for conversion.

The hosts file is located as follows;

Linux /etc/hosts
Windows C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
Mac - not sure but a web search would find it.

This is an ordinary text file where you can set an alias to any IP address
eg kx

Enter kx in the browser it goes straight to the konnexu.com site

This file can be used to block sites, for example, the following entry would block facebook

127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com

As 127.0.0.1 is the local machine address directing www.facebook.com to that address effectively dumps it.

Most computer setups the default order is to check the hosts file before Name Servers so can be much quicker too for regularly used domains, but of course, you have to know the actual IP address.

Just a reminder though, this only works on the computer where the hosts file is edited, does not affect other computers on the home network. May need a reboot for changes to take place plus I think windows configuration has the hosts file as the first search option.

Geffers

Domain Registrar - Porkbun

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 11:49:23 +0000

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Konnexu Community - DNS and Domain

hosts file

Domain Registrar - Porkbun