Host Name Vs Canonical Host Name

java ip-address hostname inetaddress canonical-name
Aryan picture Aryan · Oct 1, 2012 · Viewed 27.1k times · Source

Can anyone please explain me the difference between Host Name and Canonical Host Name?

I am currently using InetAddress class to fetch host name using the IP Address. I came across these 2 APIs. So I am just wondering, which one I should opt for?

Answer

Duncan Jones picture Duncan Jones · Oct 1, 2012

There are a few difference between the two:

  • getCanonicalHostName() will attempt to resolve the FQDN. Therefore, you would get foo.mycompany.com whereas getHostName() might just return foo.

  • getCanonicalHostName() will always do a reverse DNS lookup, whereas getHostName() would return the stored hostname if you supplied one in the InetAddress constructor.

I suspect you will be wanting to use getCanonicalHostName() if you are intending to map IP addresses to host names.

Related questions

IP Address to Hostname in Java?

My hosts file (C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts) has a bunch of IP Address to host name mappings: # Switches 192.168.200.254 sw-con-ctrl 192.168.201.253 sw-con-ctrl-2 192.168.201.254 sw-con-ctrl-1 # 192.168.188.1 sw-con-ctrl-ylw-1 # 192.168.189.1 sw-con-ctrl-blu 192.168.190.62 access-console # Routers 192.168.21.1 rtr1 192.168.22.1 rtr2 I am trying to find a way to convert from an …

Read More
How can I convert IPV6 address to IPV4 address?

I have application that uses IPv4 addresses (it stores them as long), so it only understands IPv4 addresses. Is it possible to convert IPv6 address to IPv4 with Java?

Read More
How to extract IP Address in Spring MVC Controller get call?

I am working on Spring MVC controller project in which I am making a GET URL call from the browser - Below is the url by which I am making a GET call from the browser - http://127.0.0.1:8080/testweb/processing?…

Read More