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Essentially, that particular line identifies that the local server can also be reached at 
the IP address 
127.0.1.1
, the fully qualified domain name of 
dev.mynetwork.org
, 
as well as the simplified form of 
dev
. A fully qualified domain name consists of the 
name of the server (
dev
 in this case) as well as the domain name for the organization 
(
mynetwork.org
 in this example). This enables you to ping your local server directly 
from that server by using the name 
dev.mynetwork.org
 or the simplified form of 
dev
.
If you don't have a domain name to use with your servers, you can leave the fully 
qualified domain name out of the 
/etc/hosts
 file. So in our example, that line would 
look like the following with a domain:
127.0.1.1 dev
Going back to our example of changing a hostname on a server, I mentioned that 
you can use the 
hostnamectl
 command to do that, but that command doesn't update 
the 
/etc/hosts
 file for you, it only updates the 
/etc/hostname
 file. It's a best practice 
to also update the 
/etc/hosts
 file to match. You can avoid using the 
hostnamectl
 
command altogether and manually edit the 
/etc/hosts
 and 
/etc/hostname
 files, 
which is actually my preferred method. If I have to manually edit a text file, 
regardless of whether or not I use the 
hostnamectl
 command, I figure that I may as 
well use a text editor for both.
The main takeaway, though, is to give your servers an identity that makes sense 
and matches the 
role that the server will fill within your network. At a typical 
organization, you'll have web servers, file servers, database servers, and more. A 
consistent and logical naming scheme will just make everything that much easier.
Now that we have learned how to give our servers an identity, we can learn how to 
manage network interfaces.