Windows 7: "localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself". Why?

Posted by Portman on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Portman
Published on 2009-05-05T13:51:03Z Indexed on 2011/02/19 15:26 UTC
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After 18 years of hosts files on Windows, I was surprised to see this in Windows 7 build 7100:

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#   127.0.0.1 localhost
#   ::1 localhost

Does anyone know why this change was introduced? I'm sure there has to be some kind reasoning.

And, perhaps more relevantly, are there any other important DNS-related changes in Windows 7? It scares me a little bit to think that something as fundamental as localhost name resolution has changed... makes me think there are other subtle but important changes to the DNS stack in Win7.

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