Talk:.localhost

Comment
ok who wants to add stuff to this page.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Not to be confused with localhost
IMO this needs some rewording, as for the purpose of name resolution, there is no real difference between the top-level domain localhost and the entry in the hosts file. The only difference is that a DNS query will not return the hosts entry. But there is just one name: localhost, and it should resolve to 127.0.0.1 and/or ::1, regardless of whether this is done by a resolving library consulting the hosts file, or by a DNS query where every DNS server (caching or authoritative) is supposed to return 127.0.0.1 and ::1 as well.

For comparison: I can also enter *any* other name in my local hosts file, e.g.: 192.168.0.46   com 192.168.0.47   co.uk 192.168.0.48    www.microsoft.com and the resolver will return those IP addresses when queried. Any other names will still result in DNS queries. localhost is just another such name. The only difference is that the standards specify to what addresses localhost are supposed resolve, and that *.localhost should not be entered in the DNS system at all. *.localhost can still be entered in the hosts file though, or in a local DNS server. The following is perfectly valid: 127.0.0.1      ipv4.localhost localhost
 * 1            ipv6.localhost localhost

127.0.0.2      2.localhost 127.0.0.3      3.localhost 127.0.0.4      4.localhost

So, IMO, the only real confusion is the reasoning that 'localhost' and '.localhost' seem different, so they must be different.

Maybe this article should even be merged into the localhost article ? RogierA7 (talk) 12:00, 16 December 2017 (UTC)