Originally posted by Iamonlyhuman
reply to post by 2Faced
This is gonna sound dumb but what do you do with the IP after you get it? I entered it into my brower address window and it returned a blank screen.
IP Addresses are what all computers use to communicate. The friendly names you type in your browser are given to you by DNS servers -- Domain Name
System servers. When you make a request of a web page, you computer will go to the primary DNS Server as listed in your computer's networking
information and will ask for the IP Address for the host name in question. The DNS Server will return you the IP Address.
Once your computer has the IP Address, it will send it's request using the IP address and the host name in the request. The purpose for this is that
some web servers may host several web sites on the same physical IP address. Including the host name allows the web server to pick the correct web
site to show.
To accomodate navigtation with an unpublished or missing host record, you can alter your local host file. Each major OS has one and they are all
slightly differant. I only know how to do it in windows:
Open the C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc folder
Open notepad.exe from the start menu
From the etc folder, locate the Hosts file and drag it into notepad
Go to the bottom of the file and enter in the IP address and the name as shown below.
75.126.76.151 www.abovetopsecret.com
Save the file and you are done. The change is effective immediately.
Incidentally, this is also a great way to pull a practical joke on someone by redirecting all, say google traffic, to a differant web site, such as a
porn site. Use caution when pulling this prank on someone, though, make you you stop the prank before they reformat their computer to get rid of the
mystery virus.
[edit on 10-4-2009 by rogerstigers]