question Hostname vs Domain Name. What's the difference?

[Tom_Collins]

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  Can anyone please tell me the difference between a hostname and a domain name in laymen terms. The following was taken from Wikipedia and I still don't get it.

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  [*]A hostname is a domain name that has at least one associated IP address. For example, the domain names www.example.com and example.com are also hostnames, whereas the com domain is not. However, other top-level domains, particularly country code top-level domains, may indeed have an IP address, and if so, they are also hostnames.
  [*]Hostnames impose restrictions on the characters allowed in the corresponding domain name. A valid hostname is also a valid domain name, but a valid domain name may not necessarily be valid as a hostname.

 

[ArielT]

I may be wrong but I think the hostname refers to keyword dot extension (also known as fully qualified domain) and domain in that case refers to .com alone

 

[dirk]

What do you need it for? A hostname is just the name of the corresponding computer/server. It can be any word.

 

[mr-x]

A domain is made from letters, numbers, dashes and a TLD. that is translated to an IP address; i.e. Shopping.com. ".com" is the TLD ( top level domain )

A hostname is DNS entry, normally used with a domain name; i.e. ( WWW ).shopping.com or (MAIL).shopping.com.

Private hostnames do not need a TLD or can use made up TLD. i.e. ( project.mywork ) but only resolve to private IP addresses.