When you type a website URL into the address bar of your browser, a asking is sent to a type of internet server known equally a domain name server. This server takes the URL you typed and then checks which specific IP addresses are listed for the actual servers that host the content you lot're looking for.

The trouble with this is that if something's wrong with the name server, yous're non going to get admission to the correct site. Fifty-fifty worse, if the proper name server has been hijacked, you might finish up at a fake site! The good news is that you can manually specify the link between specific IP addresses and website addresses, simply by calculation a local DNS lookup to your "hosts" file.

What Is The Hosts File?

The hosts file is simple to sympathise. It'south only a plain text file. Incidentally, this is why you should just edit the file with something similar Notepad, which won't endeavour to change the format or add extra formatting to the file.

Inside the hosts file, you tin add a listing of IP addresses along with the web address that the IP address should point to. You tin combine any IP accost and web address, fifty-fifty if they don't really go together. You could make the actual IP accost for Bing.com point to Google.com if yous wanted to.

Windows will ever check the hosts file get-go earlier sending a request to a name server. And then if an address yous type into your web browser is listed in the hosts file, you'll exist redirected to the IP address listed in the file.

What Is A Local DNS Lookup?

The procedure described in the previous paragraph is a local DNS lookup. Your computer looks up the IP accost by itself, from your local disk, without needing to contact an external server. Information technology's that uncomplicated!

Why Add Local DNS Lookup To The Hosts File?

There are a few reasons you'd want to add a local DNS lookup to your hosts file. We've already mentioned a few reasons at the offset of the article, simply people accept found quite a few artistic ways to use this elementary feature.

One important reason to add together entries to your hosts file is speed. Information technology will always be faster to exercise a local lookup than going out to an external server. Specially if that server is unreliable. Putting your most important or most often used sites in the hosts file means you never take to worry well-nigh your DNS service causing admission issues.

You tin can also use the hosts file to cake sites that y'all never want that reckoner to admission. All you accept to do is put an IP accost into the hosts file for that site which either doesn't get anywhere or points to a benign IP accost. Mutual redirections include 0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1, This is the and then-chosen "loopback" address. Check out our YouTube video for more details on that.

If yous have local devices such equally routers, IP cameras, network-attached storage and then on, you can use your hosts file to requite their IP addresses an piece of cake to remember proper noun.

Using Premade Hosts Files

If it sounds pretty tedious to add dozens or even hundreds of sites to your hosts file, then you aren't alone! The skilful news is that there are enough of places on the spider web where y'all tin find pre-fabricated lists that you can simply copy and paste into your own hosts file.

The chief problem with this is that at that place could exist malicious reroutes subconscious in these lists. Which ways you either need to verify each IP accost by hand or make sure that you lot trust the source of the list.

Editing The Hosts File In Windows 10

Since the hosts file leaves some room for mischief, yous can't simply open it and edit away. You'll need administrator privileges on your computer in society to brand changes. Before you make any changes to your hosts file, we strongly recommend you lot copy and paste it'southward original contents into another text file just in instance something goes incorrect!

To modify your hosts file in Windows 10, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Start Carte and type "Notepad".
  1. One time Notepad appears, right-click on it and select "Run as administrator".
  1. northward Notepad, click Open up and head to c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts and open it the hosts file. Remember to alter the file blazon to "All Files".
  1. Yous should run across this default hosts file from Microsoft.
  1.  Don't worry nearly any of the text already in the document. Y'all can just get out information technology as is and add your own entries at the lesser of the file. Whatsoever line that starts with a "#" symbol is treated as a annotate and non used for proper noun lookups.

Adding a local lookup to the list is super-like shooting fish in a barrel. But write downwardly the IP address of the site, followed by a space and then the website's address.

Remember to relieve what yous've added when closing the file. That's all you have to do! Now your estimator will skip over the whole DNS lookup process when accessing the sites you've specified.

How To Find A Website'south IP Accost

What if you lot don't know the IP address of a site you want to add to your hosts file? It's really pretty easy to observe a site's IP address using the Control Prompt in Windows x. Here'southward how:

  1. Open up the Start Carte and type "cmd".
  1. Later on the Command Prompt opens, blazon "tracert" followed by a space and the site y'all want to cheque. In this example, information technology'southward "google.com". Then press the Enter key on your keyboard.
  1. Here you'll see the IP address of the site.You tin now use this address in your hosts file.

The Hosts With The Most

Who would think that such a minor text file hidden deep in the Windows folder could turn out to exist so useful? At present y'all're a proper local lookup guru, taking control of how your figurer accesses websites.