aha! the hosts file ( see Fotis for location I believe he has it right for WinXP) lists ip addresses with domain names so your PC knows that me.mydomain.com equates to 200.111.86.76 The key here is that the OS reads the hosts file first and then asks DNS, so whatever you put in will override what your public DNS server says. see "name resolution" and "domain name service" IIRC Windows help is pretty good on this...
When Tomcat ( or any app ) Gets an http request it has to be able to figure out the IP address from either "localhost" or "name.domain.com" hence the need for hosts file and DNS. If your browser says "http://..."; it still uses the network interface, even if its all on one machine. this is a Good Thing. If it uses "file://..." then not. This is why the raw ip address works and localhost doesn't - see? HTH sorry if its a bit pedantic John ralcab wrote: > (3) Excuse my ignorance, but what's a host file? I'm self taught on > this and pretty new to it. > > >
