host file help

[kurse6]

hey guys. well let's cut the small talk. i'm trying to access a free lineage 2 server and the directions state that i have to edit my host file. i did my reading on it and found that it should just assign an ip to a host name and the computer should look through the host file before attempting to let the dns resolve. so i do that, i open my host file in notepad and add the line of 72.xx.xx.xx l2authd.lineage2.com. and i attempt to log into the server after saving the changes and not changing the ext name of the file. it doesn't work, it logs me into the real servers. so, what i do just to test this out, i went to the command prompt and attempted to ping the l2authd host name and got a 206.xx.xx.xx ip. i contacted a friend and had him add the line of 127.0.0.1 xxx to his host file (he plays on that free server as well). now i had him ping xxx and he pinged his loopback, i did the same on my computer and got the hostname could not be found. i asked him to ping the l2authd hostname and he was pinging the assigned ip. i deleted the host file all-together and i'm still able to ping 'localhost', am i supposed to be able to do that after deleting that file? so my questions is, why is it not checking the host file? that's the only thing that i can think of. i've performed netsh ip dump and i've restarted my computer after making each change and i still get nothing. can anyone help me out here or should i take this to the network boards? thx for your advise in advance.

[alc6379]

did you run ipconfig /flushdns? That flushes the DNS cache.

Also, did you put it in this format:

206.xxx.xxx.xxx          l2authd.lineage2.com

Are you sure you've got the hostname correct in that entry? There's not much to the HOSTS file-- you need to have one, and it needs to at least have the entry for 127.0.0.1 (localhost) address.

[kc0arf]

Hi,

I am very curious on why the software doesn't use DNS to translate the named address to an IP number. The use of hosts files is discouraged, because it is a manual update if any of the ip numbers changes.

Do not get host file happy and start programming shortcuts -- that will cause problems down the road as IP numbers for companies change.

Also be aware that not all devices respond to pings -- it is very possible to firewall the responses out, or firewall out the PING completely. With all of the network attacks running amok on the internet, many administrators have shut down ICMP responses from their devices.

Christian

[alc6379]

Hi,

I am very curious on why the software doesn't use DNS to translate the named address to an IP number. The use of hosts files is discouraged, because it is a manual update if any of the ip numbers changes.

I'd be willing to bet that there's no other way to do it-- I'll bet that Lineage is programmed to look for a server with that name, regardless of what its IP address is. Not knowing much about the game, it seems like this isn't something the game was designed to do, but you're not hurting anything by doing it.