Internet history

[Chip Marshall]

On 07-Apr-2010, David Hardy <belovedbold357 at gmail.com> sent:
> Yes, md, I remember, as do many or all of us, the same bunch of
> names for the systems, usually either from the Snow White gang,
> or Lord of the Rings, or Hitchhiker's Guide. Them were the
> daze. Now our brilliant successors name them with strings of
> alphanumeric characters the provenance of which only they, the
> holy annointed ones, can fathom.

There was a long and largely unproductive thread on the NANOG
list last month about network naming schemes. Cute naming schemes
are fun, and can be workable in small networks, but tend not to
scale well.

For instance, at my dayjob, we used to name systems after elements.
Plenty of elements, so you don't run out of names very quickly, but you
reach a point where all the easy ones (carbon, iron, neon, etc) are
taken, and you're stuck with system with long annoying names
(dysprosium, darmstadtium, so on.)

And worse, what do you do when a previously unnamed element that you
decided to use (unununium) is assigned a name (roentgenium)? Just throw
in a CNAME, or do you take the time to reconfigure the system?

We now use a systematic name system based on location and server role.
On the whole, it's a lot easier to remember, and the learning curve for
new employees is less steep.

I still like cute names for my personal domain, though most
people don't recognize the system (sentinel, sumo, toaster,
wraith, peewee, flea) but it's reasonable scalable, at least to
the extent of my budget to buy more network devices.

http://www.namingschemes.com/ has a huge list of lists of names, btw.

-- 
Chip Marshall <chip at 2bithacker.net>
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/          KB1QYW        PGP key ID 43C4819E
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