CertiGuide to Network+  9  Chapter 0101:  TCP/IP

Crossover Connection Between Two Computers 1 Static Mapping with Text Files

Because the 32-bit number is impossible to remember, and the ‘humanized’ octet number isn’t much better, human names are given, such as Microsoft.com. A network function called a name service handles the translation between the human-readable fully qualified domain name (FQDN) like www.microsoft.com and numeric IP address like 199.97.31.1, much as telephone books and Directory Assistance services handle the translation between names and telephone addresses. A fully-qualified domain name is one consisting of both a simple hostname portion, and a domain name portion. For example, in www.microsoft.com, www would be the hostname and Microsoft.com would be the domain name, basically the identifier of which organization’s network is involved.

Thanks to TCP/IP’s ability to resolve (or map) user friendly names to IP addresses, we don’t have to remember the numeric IP addresses of every web site we want to visit. Your computer knows how to look up the IP address of a site when you give it an easier-to-remember name like www.microsoft.com.

Crossover Connection Between Two Computers 1 Static Mapping with Text Files