What is the difference between domain name and hostname?
 

Eg. A dynamic DNS service provider maps my IP address to david.redirectme.org, so when I key in http://david.redirectme.org, I get to view my homepage.

Qn: Which part of david.redirectme.org is the hostname and which part is the domain name?

Thanks !

david is the hostname.
and redirectme.org is the domain name.

And to get a little more detailed:

hostname is the specific and unique name of the machine.
domainname is the domain in which is belongs to, where many other machines can also belong in, etc.

Ha, I just tried to check out your webpage, and it's gone. I am thinking about setting up my machine at home via my cable modem, but I'm curious about how you setup this dhcp redirection thing. Did you change it, or are you still having problems with it?

You can check out www.no-ip.com, www.dyndns.org for such services :)

If I'm to setup a MTA on david.redirectme.org (email server), would my email address be userid@david.redirectme.org or userid@redirectme.org ?

Thanks !

It should be userid@david.redirectme.org.
I'm not sure if that is always the case though.
And I'm not sure if you need to do something else in order for your mail to arrive at the mailserver david, such as creating an MX record in somekind of DNS or anything like that.

I prefer www.zoneedit.com as they allow you to have your own registered domain name to use, so you don't have dyndns.org or no-ip.com mixed in with your IP, etc. Its like having your own DNS server that's really easy to setup and understand.

Hmm. That's an awesome service!
Thanx for the tip trickykid! I can surely make good use of that once I have my server all configured.

With this service, you need to already own the domain name. With dyndns and other sites like it, you don't need one, but you have to use their dyndns.org suffix.