What is a hosts file? That is behind it

Starting point for host files: How does the Internet find websites?

To understand what a hosts file is, we first need to clarify the basics. This includes how to find websites on the Internet.

Every operator of a website, for example "CHIP.de", has his own IP address, which consists of twelve numbers.
In order for your computer to find the page on the net, it needs this IP address, because it cannot do anything with "CHIP.de". If you had to remember the IP address of every page and enter it into the browser, surfing the Internet would be quite exhausting.
This is why the so-called "Domain Name System", or DNS for short, takes on this task. The DNS separates the web address "CHIP.de" into the associated IP address and then connects it to the CHIP website in the browser.
The addresses are therefore resolved in the DNS. You can get more information about DNS in a special practical tip on this topic. But there was also a time before DNS - and that's where the host file came into play.

When there was no DNS, the hosts file was the source of the addresses. The way it worked was similar:

Before DNS, the resolution of an address into an IP described above was done by the hosts files. However, they weren't on a server like DNS, but at home on your local computer.
New pages on the Internet were added as new information each time the hosts file was updated. At first that worked quite well. If a new page was not added, you could not call it up in the browser. You would then have had to know the corresponding IP address by heart.
However, the internet has developed extremely quickly and has grown almost explosively. The hosts files no longer came along and DNS was introduced. Despite everything, there is still a hosts file on Windows, but this has essentially become superfluous. Above all, it serves to work in networks that are independent of the Internet.

We will show you how to edit a hosts file in Windows in the next practical tip.