What is a host in networking?

In networking, a host is any device with an address on the network that sends or receives traffic: a PC, a server, a printer, a phone, a camera or a virtual machine. Security tools talk about hosts rather than computers because attacks often involve devices nobody thinks of as computers. When an alert says a host is beaconing or scanning, the first job is to identify which physical or virtual device it is and who owns it. In NetSenX pricing, a device means a host running the NetSenX agent; one agent on a mirror port watches every host on that segment.

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