What goes in /etc/hosts?

[Nat Gross]

Alexander Dalloz wrote:

>Am Do, den 10.03.2005 schrieb Nat Gross um 18:02:
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>>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?
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>>-nat
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>.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.
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>Alexander
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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

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