On windows, socket.getfqdn() doesn't return a fully qualified 
name. Further, it returns the NETBIOS name (I think they call it 
that) of the computer, not a name that's useful for 
networking:

C:\>\Python22\python.exe
Python 
2.2.1 (#34, Apr  9 2002, 19:34:33) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on 
win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more 
information.
>>> import socket
>>> 
socket.getfqdn()
'lorax'

Python 2.2.1 (from 
python.org), Windows 2000.

--bob