Since I built a PHP app that runs on Linux Windows and MacOS I just discovered that using gethostname() behaves differently on different OSes. Linux will return "hostname" while MacOS 10.15 will return "hostname.local" . Have yet to determine how Windows behaves but the difference is worth noting. Only a few days ago I was wanting to get the LAN extension in Linux and was never able to. I was oly hable to get "hostname". In MacOS it is just there. with "hostname.local"