diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index 65c4823c347..24da48af1d8 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -87,6 +87,9 @@ Trunk (unreleased changes)
     HADOOP-6613. Moves the RPC version check ahead of the AuthMethod check.
     (Kan Zhang via ddas)
 
+    HADOOP-6682. NetUtils:normalizeHostName does not process hostnames starting
+    with [a-f] correctly. (jghoman)
+
 Release 0.21.0 - Unreleased
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
index e8590618726..bc81d5b79a8 100644
--- a/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
+++ b/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/net/NetUtils.java
@@ -398,7 +398,7 @@ public class NetUtils {
    * @return its IP address in the string format
    */
   public static String normalizeHostName(String name) {
-    if (Character.digit(name.charAt(0), 16) != -1) { // it is an IP
+    if (Character.digit(name.charAt(0), 10) != -1) { // it is an IP
       return name;
     } else {
       try {