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Networking & Telecommunications vocabulary · Network Fundamentals

Host

Meaning in networking & telecommunications, with examples

/həʊst/nounCommon term

In networking & telecommunications, host means: Any device on a network that has an IP address and sends or receives data, such as a computer, server, phone or printer.

In Turkish: host, uç cihaz, ana bilgisayar

How it is used

Used in technical documents, commands and error messages: 'host unreachable', 'host not found', the number of hosts in a subnet. In server work 'host' can also mean the physical machine that runs virtual machines, so check the context.

Example sentences

  1. A /26 subnet gives you 62 usable host addresses.

  2. The scan found 140 active hosts on the office network.

Common collocations

  • host address
  • destination host unreachable
  • remote host
  • number of hosts
  • IP addressA unique numerical label given to every device on an IP network so that data can be sent to it, for example 192.168.1.20 in IPv4.
  • networkA group of computers, phones and other devices that are connected by cables or radio signals so that they can exchange data and share resources.
  • subnetA smaller network created by dividing a larger IP address range, so that groups of devices such as offices, departments or servers can be kept separate and managed more easily.
  • DNSShort for Domain Name System: the service that translates names such as example.com into the IP addresses that computers use to find each other.
  • pingTo send a small test message to another device and wait for a reply, in order to check whether it can be reached and how long the round trip takes.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Network Fundamentals

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