Conflict among subdomains?

[Harold Pritchett]

"Robert J. O'Hara" wrote:
> 
> I run a small webserver on a PowerMac (strong.uncg.edu).  "strong" is
> our organization, and for clarity and group identity among our members I
> want have the other machines in the organization given names like, say,
> mercury.strong.uncg.edu, venus.strong.uncg.edu, earth.strong.uncg.edu,
> etc.  But these other machines are not subordinate on the physical
> network to strong.uncg.edu; they are just other machines on the campus
> uncg.edu network.  (I don't know the technical language here, so what
> I'm saying may make no sense.)

There are two things here.  Names, usually show some political structure.
The machine earth.strong.uncg.edu would normally be expected to be owned,
controlled, or in some way subordinate to the political organization 
strong.uncg.edu.  

IP address show physical network relationships (at least in a routed
network they do.)  The numerical addresses indicate where physically
in the network a machine is located.  It has nothing to do with who
owns or controls it.

> 
> What I'm wondering is if you name a machine, say, earth.strong.uncg.edu,
> does it actually have to bear some network relation to strong.uncg.edu,
> or can it just be another machine in the uncg.edu domain?

Yes.  It's just a machine located somewhere.  But the name indicated
it is owned or subordinate to the strong.uncg.edu organizational unit.

>  If a new
> machine is named earth.strong.uncg.edu will that mess something up such
> that the webserver strong.uncg.edu will break?  That's what I asked our
> campus people, and they didn't know and didn't really want to
> experiment.

It should be fine.  We do it here all the time.  Since I don't administer 
your domains, YMMV. 

Harold Pritchett
The University of Georgia
harold at uga.edu