Naming the Nameservers

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Cedric" == Cedric Puddy <cedric at itactics.itactics.com> writes:

    Cedric> 	<type_letter><div/owner_3characters><location><desc>.blahblah.com

    Cedric> The <type_letter> is one of "H" (host - any kind of
    Cedric> server), "P" (print server), "S" (switch/managable hub),
    Cedric> "W" (workstation/pc), "R" (router/bridge management addr,
    Cedric> etc), and a couple others.

    Cedric> The <div/owner> is a three char code that indicated either
    Cedric> who owned the box or which divisions' box it was.

    Cedric> The <location> was a three char code that indicated whee
    Cedric> the box was, based on nearest major airport.  eg:
    Cedric> something near Toronto would have "YKF", and something
    Cedric> near Los Angeles would have "LAX".  Useful for widely
    Cedric> distributed networks.  Easy for airline industry people,
    Cedric> but possibly difficult for others.

    Cedric> <desc> was a "free form" description. eg: "tonysmith".

I think this naming scheme is horrible. Sorry. Just try using these
hostnames in conversation. If you can't pronounce the name of a host,
your naming scheme is broken.

The scheme you've described has inconsistencies: a print server is one
of "any kind of server", so it could have a name beginning with an S
or a P. It also doesn't take cope very well with one organisational
unit having more than 1 of some device. What if John Smith owns two
file servers at the same location?

Single letters to describe device functions are not good because of
ambiguities and the potential for misunderstanding. [Unless of course
everyone knows your naming standard which is highly unlikely.] You
might thing W means "workstation". Someone else might think it means
"WINS server" or "web server". Or how about confusing firewalls and
file servers, mainframes and mailhubs, etc, etc. And it's not
extensible either. What do you do when your net has >26 distinct
device types?

The idea of using location codes is good, but these are better as
components of the FQDN: host.LOC.foobar.com. [BTW there's an ISO
standard for location codes. It covers most major towns and cities in
the world. See http://www.unece.org/trade/lcode/locodes.htm.]

Remember that the DNS name space is hierarchical. This allows you to
structure FQDNs according to how your company or whatever is
organised. There's no real reason to squeeze all that information into
a handful of characters in one part of the FQDN. If you do, you might
as well chuck out the DNS and use a flat name space with /etc/hosts or
something like that. What's the more descriptive FQDN:
	print-server.DDD.LOC.mydomain.com
or
	PDDDLOCjohnsmith.mydomain.com

where DDD is some division or department code and LOC is a location code.