diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index a608c8dd350..3aea617ed12 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -92,6 +92,9 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
     HADOOP-8085. Add RPC metrics to ProtobufRpcEngine. (Hari Mankude via
     suresh)
 
+    HADOOP-8108. Move method getHostPortString() from NameNode to NetUtils.
+    (Brandon Li via jitendra)
+
   BUG FIXES
 
     HADOOP-8018.  Hudson auto test for HDFS has started throwing javadoc
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
index f71c1894adc..0bfeaa7cfcd 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
@@ -606,6 +606,13 @@ public class NetUtils {
     catch(UnknownHostException uhe) {return "" + uhe;}
   }
   
+  /**
+   * Compose a "host:port" string from the address.
+   */
+  public static String getHostPortString(InetSocketAddress addr) {
+    return addr.getHostName() + ":" + addr.getPort();
+  }
+  
   /**
    * Checks if {@code host} is a local host name and return {@link InetAddress}
    * corresponding to that address.