See Also
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| This is retired content. This content is outdated and is no longer being maintained. It is provided as a courtesy for individuals who are still using these technologies. This content may contain URLs that were valid when originally published, but now link to sites or pages that no longer exist. |
IPv4 is designed to work with 32-bit IP addresses of the source and destination hosts. You can assign and use unique host names for your communication devices. Unique host names are easier to remember than IP addresses.
A host name is an alias that is assigned to an IP node to identify it as a TCP/IP host. The host name can be up to 255 characters long and can contain alphabetic and numeric characters, hyphens, and periods. You can assign multiple host names to the same host.
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| Host names are used by programs that use Windows Sockets (Winsock), for example, Microsoft Internet Explorer and the FTP utility. Windows Sockets programs can use the IPv4 address or the host name for the destination to which you want to connect. When the IP address is specified, name resolution is not required. When a host name is specified, the host name must be resolved to a valid address before IP-based communication with a resource can begin. For example, the host must be resolved to an IPv6 address before communication with an IPv6 resource can begin. |
Host names can take various forms. The following table shows the two most common forms, host name and domain name.
| Host name form | Description |
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Host name |
A nickname or alias for an IPv4 address that individuals can assign and use. |
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Domain name |
A domain name is a structured name that follows Internet conventions in a hierarchical namespace named Domain Name System (DNS). An example of a domain name is www.microsoft.com. |
Windows Embedded CE uses the Domain Name System (DNS) and the Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) for host name resolution. DNS is a naming service that resolves system names to current IP addresses and uses a hierarchical model to pass name resolutions between domains. DNS enables a TCP/IP host to find the IP address of another host using only the host name. WINS provides a distributed database for registering and querying dynamic name-to-IP address mappings in a routed network environment.