Trilight Zone

[digital8]

as you should know by now, hostnames and domains (domain is the shortest hostname possible - something.org/net/com/etc') and actually aliases to IP addresses, so people won't have to remember the IP address of the server that hosts their favorite website. Instead, you would simply need to remember the hostname.
Anyway, these hostnames are stored on DNSs, or NSs. DNS is a short for Domain Name Server, and NS is a short for Name Server. These are actually two different words for the exact same thing.
Anyway, the Unix command nslookup looks up the IP addresses of hostnames or the hostnames of IP addresses. Now, if you have someone's IP address, this means you can find his hostname, right? So what good is a hostname anyway?
When I am connected to the Internet, my hostname is usually something like this: RAS54-79.hfa.netvision.net.il. It tells us that I am connected through extension number RAS54-79 (this information is no use to us, so you may disregard it), my ISP is Netvision and I live in Israel (the .il extension stands for Israel. For more country extensions, head to blacksun.box.sk and checkout the acros.txt file on the projects page) in the city Haifa (hfa is a short for Haifa).
nslookup can do much much more than this. For more information, type 'man nslookup' (no quotes) to get to nslookup's man (manual) page. Also check out Appendix A: nslookup tips.