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Cisco IOS Software Configuration Guide for Cisco Aironet Access Points
OL-11350-01
Chapter5 Administering the Access PointWireless Device Access
Configuring a System Name and Prompt
When you set the system name, it is also used as the system prompt.
To return to the default host name, use the no hostname global configuration command.
Understanding DNS
The DNS protocol controls the Domain Name System (DNS), a distributed database with which you can
map host names to IP addresses. When you configure DNS on the wireless device, you can substitute the
host name for the IP address with all IP commands, such as ping, telnet, connect, and related Telnet
support operations.
IP defines a hierarchical naming scheme that allows a device to be identified by its location or domain.
Domain names are pieced together with periods (.) as the delimiting characters. For example, Cisco
Systems is a commercial organization that IP identifies by a com domain name, so its domain name is
cisco.com. A specific device in this domain, such as the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) system, is
identified as ftp.cisco.com.
To keep track of domain names, IP has defined the concept of a domain name server, which holds a cache
(or database) of names mapped to IP addresses. To map domain names to IP addresses, you must first
identify the host names, specify the name server that is present on your network, and enable the DNS.
This section contains this configuration information:
•Default DNS Configuration, page 5-33
•Setting Up DNS, page 5-34
•Displaying the DNS Configuration, page 5-35

Default DNS Configuration

Table 5 -5 shows the default DNS configuration.
Command Purpose
Step1 configure terminal Enter global configuration mode.
Step2 hostname name Manually configure a system name.
The default setting is ap.
Note When you change the system name, the wireless device radios reset,
and associated client devices disassociate and quickly reassociate.
Note You can enter up to 63 characters for the system name. However,
when the wireless device identifies itself to client devices, it uses
only the first 15 characters in the system name. If it is important for
client users to distinguish between access pointwireless devices,
make sure a unique portion of the system name appears in the first
15 characters.
Step3 end Return to privileged EXEC mode.
Step4 show running-config Verify your entries.
Step5 copy running-config startup-config (Optional) Save your entries in the configuration file.