Textual representation of IP addresses
The textual representation of an IP address is address family specific.
For IPv4 address format, please refer to Inet4Address#format; For IPv6 address format, please refer to Inet6Address#format.
There is a couple of System Properties affecting how IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are used.
Host Name Resolution
Host name-to-IP address resolution is accomplished through the use of a combination of local machine configuration information and network naming services such as the Domain Name System (DNS) and Network Information Service(NIS). The particular naming
services(s) being used is by default the local machine configured one. For any host name, its corresponding IP address is returned.
Reverse name resolution means that for any IP address, the host associated with the IP address is returned.
The InetAddress class provides methods to resolve host names to their IP addresses and vice versa.
InetAddress Caching
The InetAddress class has a cache to store successful as well as unsuccessful host name resolutions.
By default, when a security manager is installed, in order to protect against DNS spoofing attacks, the result of positive host name resolutions are cached forever. When a security manager is not installed, the default behavior is to cache entries for a
finite (implementation dependent) period of time. The result of unsuccessful host name resolution is cached for a very short period of time (10 seconds) to improve performance.
If the default behavior is not desired, then a Java security property can be set to a different Time-to-live (TTL) value for positive caching. Likewise, a system admin can configure a different negative caching TTL value when needed.
Two Java security properties control the TTL values used for positive and negative host name resolution caching:
networkaddress.cache.ttl
Indicates the caching policy for successful name lookups from the name service. The value is specified as as integer to indicate the number of seconds to cache the successful lookup. The default setting is to cache for
an implementation specific period of time.
A value of -1 indicates "cache forever".
networkaddress.cache.negative.ttl (default: 10)
Indicates the caching policy for un-successful name lookups from the name service. The value is specified as as integer to indicate the number of seconds to cache the failure for un-successful lookups.
A value of 0 indicates "never cache". A value of -1 indicates "cache forever".