diff --git a/specs/agents/metadata.md b/specs/agents/metadata.md
index d5c05307..0aed04eb 100644
--- a/specs/agents/metadata.md
+++ b/specs/agents/metadata.md
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ## Metadata
 
-As mentioned above, the first "event" in each ND-JSON stream contains metadata to fold into subsequent events. The metadata that agents should collect includes are described in the following sub-sections.
+As mentioned above, the first "event" in each ND-JSON stream contains metadata to fold into subsequent events. The metadata that agents should collect includes is are described in the following sub-sections.
 
  - service metadata
  - global labels (requires APM Server 7.2 or greater)
@@ -24,42 +24,38 @@ System metadata relates to the host/container in which the service being monitor
 
 #### Hostname
 
-This hostname reported by the agent is mapped by the APM Server to the 
-[`host.hostname` ECS field](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/ecs/current/ecs-host.html#field-host-hostname), which should 
-typically contain what the `hostname` command returns on the host machine. However, since we rely on this field for 
-our integration with beats data, we should attempt to follow a similar logic to the `os.Hostname()` Go API, which beats 
-relies one. While `os.Hostname()` contains some complex OS-specific logic to cover all sorts of edge cases, our 
-algorithm should be simpler. It relies on the execution of external commands with a fallback to standard environment 
-variables. Agents SHOULD implement this hostname discovery algorithm wherever possible:
+The hostname value(s) reported by the agent are mapped by APM Server to the ECS
+[`host.hostname`](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/ecs/current/ecs-host.html#field-host-hostname) and
+[`host.name`](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/ecs/current/ecs-host.html#field-host-name) fields.
+
+Agents SHOULD return the lower-cased FQDN whenever possible, which might require a DNS query.
+
+Agents SHOULD implement this hostname discovery algorithm wherever possible:
 ```
 var hostname;
 if os == windows
-  hostname = exec "cmd /c hostname"                   // or any equivalent *
+  // https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12268885/powershell-get-fqdn-hostname
+  // https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.net.dns.gethostentry
+  hostname = exec "powershell.exe [System.Net.Dns]::GetHostEntry($env:computerName).HostName" // or any equivalent *
+  if (hostname == null || hostname.length == 0)
+    hostname = exec "cmd.exe /c hostname"               // or any equivalent *
   if (hostname == null || hostname.length == 0)
     hostname = env.get("COMPUTERNAME")
 else 
-  hostname = exec "uname -n"                          // or any equivalent *
-  if (hostname == null || hostname.length == 0)
-    hostname = exec "hostname"                        // or any equivalent *
+  hostname = exec "hostname -f"                         // or any equivalent *
   if (hostname == null || hostname.length == 0)
     hostname = env.get("HOSTNAME")
   if (hostname == null || hostname.length == 0)
     hostname = env.get("HOST")
 
 if hostname != null
-  hostname = hostname.trim()                          // see details below **
+  hostname = hostname.toLowerCase().trim()              // see details below **
 ```
 `*` this algorithm is using external commands in order to be OS-specific and language-independent, however these 
-may be replaced with language-specific APIs that provide the equivalent result. The main consideration when choosing 
-what to use is to avoid hostname discovery that relies on DNS lookup.
+may be replaced with language-specific APIs that provide the equivalent result.
 
 `**` in this case, `trim()` refers to the removal of all leading and trailing characters of which codepoint is less-than
-or equal to `U+0020` (space).
-
-Agents MAY use alternative approaches, but those need to generally conform to the basic concept. Failing to discover the 
-proper hostname may cause failure in correlation between APM traces and data reported by other clients (e.g. 
-Metricbeat). For example, if the agent uses an API that produces the FQDN, this value is likely to mismatch hostname 
-reported by other clients.
+or equal to `U+0020` (space), the `toLowerCase()` refers to the replacement of characters in `A-Z` with their `a-z` equivalents.
 
 In addition to auto-discovery of the hostname, agents SHOULD also expose the `ELASTIC_APM_HOSTNAME` config option that 
 can be used as a manual fallback.
@@ -97,7 +93,7 @@ On Linux, the container ID and some of the Kubernetes metadata can be extracted
     If there is a match to either expression, the capturing group contains the pod ID. We then unescape underscores 
     (`_`) to hyphens (`-`) in the pod UID.
     If we match a pod UID then we record the hostname as the pod name since, by default, Kubernetes will set the 
-    hostname to the pod name. Finally, we record the basename as the container ID without any further checks.
+    _short_ hostname (not FQDN) to the pod name. Finally, we record the basename as the container ID without any further checks.
 
  4. If we did not match a Kubernetes pod UID above, then we check if the basename matches one of the following regular 
  expressions: