Re: What goes in /etc/hosts?

Alexander Dalloz wrote:

Am Do, den 10.03.2005 schrieb Nat Gross um 18:02:

When you say append .local, is that referring to all machines on the local net, or only to this one local host. In other words, for the other hosts on the lan, do I also need to append .local?

-nat

.local is an official TLD part for private address space. It does not
cover only the single local host but can be used for your whole LAN,
i.e. kitchen.homearea.local, floor.homearea.local,
mediaserver.homearea.local, ... So if you use fully qualified host names
in your LAN, not only short names, either with just plain /etc/hosts
files or your local DNS server, you can use .local as the TLD suffix,
which will not collide with any public name space.

Alexander

So, if I understand it correctly, .local is just an agreed upon protocol. It's NOT something that *any* software translates to meaning 'the local lan'. I might just as well use kitchen.homearea.kerrybush, floor.homearea.kerrybush. (Why kerrybush? Sure to be unique! :-) )
By the way, can't I [in most cases] just get away with short names for a local lan?
Thanks;
-nat