The Hosts File

Just a quick tip for all of you out there. The Windows Hosts file can be a good asset that helps to make life a little easier and quicker on you when using your computer/server.

There might be times in an application that you are prompted to input a network address for the application to connect to. One common example, Remote Desktop. Instead of having to type out the IP address every time, you can make your own mini DNS Server like file. This file would be.... the hosts file.

What happens is you need to open and edit the existing hosts file that Windows uses. Within the file, you can make a string equal to an IP address. For example, say you have a kitchen computer at the network address 192.168.1.130. Instead of having to type the full IP address to connect to it, you can edit the hosts file. Make "kitchen" equal 192.168.1.130. When you do this, then your set. Go to Remote Desktop, and when it asks for the network address, type "kitchen". Windows will automatically reference the hosts file, it will see that the IP address corresponding to "kitchen" is 192.168.1.130, and it will connect to that address.

As you can see, it is basically what a DNS server does, except its located and used only by your computer. Hope this helped out.