USE HOSTS FIRST

If USE_HOSTS_FIRST is set up, TCP/IP will first look in the local file ..\Etc\Hosts for the dotted IP address for a specific Hostname on the internet.

Whenever you connect to the internet and you access a host (for example http://www.netlabs.org), your browser must know the dotted IP address (for example 195.65.67.48) for the host. So the browser contact a Domain name Server (DNS) and ask for the IP address. This takes some time, to speed up internet connection you can define in the Hosts file the hostnames and the IP addresses.

OS/2 will only use Hosts file if USE_HOSTS_FIRST is set to 1. You can define all kind of hosts www-server, mail-server, news-server, ftp-server or whatever else. To get the IP address for a host type "host" and the hostname in an OS/2 window. The actual Path for the host file is defined by the ETC environment variable.

SET USE_HOSTS_FIRST=<value>

Example

SET USE_HOSTS_FIRST=1

Parameters

Value

1 will check the host files first.