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+Network Working Group D. Libes
+Request for Comments: 1178 Integrated Systems Group/NIST
+FYI: 5 August 1990
+
+
+ Choosing a Name for Your Computer
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+ This FYI RFC is a republication of a Communications of the ACM
+ article on guidelines on what to do and what not to do when naming
+ your computer [1]. This memo provides information for the Internet
+ community. It does not specify any standard.
+
+ Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Abstract
+
+ In order to easily distinguish between multiple computers, we give
+ them names. Experience has taught us that it is as easy to choose
+ bad names as it is to choose good ones. This essay presents
+ guidelines for deciding what makes a name good or bad.
+
+ Keywords: domain name system, naming conventions, computer
+ administration, computer network management
+
+Introduction
+
+ As soon as you deal with more than one computer, you need to
+ distinguish between them. For example, to tell your system
+ administrator that your computer is busted, you might say, "Hey Ken.
+ Goon is down!"
+
+ Computers also have to be able to distinguish between themselves.
+ Thus, when sending mail to a colleague at another computer, you might
+ use the command "mail libes@goon".
+
+ In both cases, "goon" refers to a particular computer. How the name
+ is actually dereferenced by a human or computer need not concern us
+ here. This essay is only concerned with choosing a "good" name. (It
+ is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of the domain
+ name system as described by [2].)
+
+ By picking a "good" name for your computer, you can avoid a number of
+ problems that people stumble over again and again.
+
+ Here are some guidelines on what NOT to do.
+
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ Don't overload other terms already in common use.
+
+ Using a word that has strong semantic implications in the
+ current context will cause confusion. This is especially true
+ in conversation where punctuation is not obvious and grammar is
+ often incorrect.
+
+ For example, a distributed database had been built on top of
+ several computers. Each one had a different name. One machine
+ was named "up", as it was the only one that accepted updates.
+ Conversations would sound like this: "Is up down?" and "Boot
+ the machine up." followed by "Which machine?"
+
+ While it didn't take long to catch on and get used to this
+ zaniness, it was annoying when occasionally your mind would
+ stumble, and you would have to stop and think about each word
+ in a sentence. It is as if, all of a sudden, English has
+ become a foreign language.
+
+ Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine.
+
+ A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was
+ going to be used to control a number of machines on a shop
+ floor. A while later, a new machine was acquired to help with
+ some of the processing. Needless to say, it couldn't be called
+ "shop" as well. Indeed, both machines ended up performing more
+ specific tasks, allowing more precision in naming. A year
+ later, five new machines were installed and the original one
+ was moved to an unrelated project. It is simply impossible to
+ choose generic names that remain appropriate for very long.
+
+ Of course, they could have called the second one "shop2" and so
+ on. But then one is really only distinguishing machines by
+ their number. You might as well just call them "1", "2", and
+ "3". The only time this kind of naming scheme is appropriate
+ is when you have a lot of machines and there are no reasons for
+ any human to distinguish between them. For example, a master
+ computer might be controlling an array of one hundred
+ computers. In this case, it makes sense to refer to them with
+ the array indices.
+
+ While computers aren't quite analogous to people, their names
+ are. Nobody expects to learn much about a person by their
+ name. Just because a person is named "Don" doesn't mean he is
+ the ruler of the world (despite what the "Choosing a Name for
+ your Baby" books say). In reality, names are just arbitrary
+ tags. You cannot tell what a person does for a living, what
+ their hobbies are, and so on.
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ Don't use your own name.
+
+ Even if a computer is sitting on your desktop, it is a mistake
+ to name it after yourself. This is another case of
+ overloading, in which statements become ambiguous. Does "give
+ the disk drive to don" refer to a person or computer?
+
+ Even using your initials (or some other moniker) is
+ unsatisfactory. What happens if I get a different machine
+ after a year? Someone else gets stuck with "don" and I end up
+ living with "jim". The machines can be renamed, but that is
+ excess work and besides, a program that used a special
+ peripheral or database on "don" would start failing when it
+ wasn't found on the "new don".
+
+ It is especially tempting to name your first computer after
+ yourself, but think about it. Do you name any of your other
+ possessions after yourself? No. Your dog has its own name, as
+ do your children. If you are one of those who feel so inclined
+ to name your car and other objects, you certainly don't reuse
+ your own name. Otherwise you would have a great deal of
+ trouble distinguishing between them in speech.
+
+ For the same reason, it follows that naming your computer the
+ same thing as your car or another possession is a mistake.
+
+ Don't use long names.
+
+ This is hard to quantify, but experience has shown that names
+ longer than eight characters simply annoy people.
+
+ Most systems will allow prespecified abbreviations, but why not
+ choose a name that you don't have to abbreviate to begin with?
+ This removes any chance of confusion.
+
+ Avoid alternate spellings.
+
+ Once we called a machine "czek". In discussion, people
+ continually thought we were talking about a machine called
+ "check". Indeed, "czek" isn't even a word (although "Czech"
+ is).
+
+ Purposely incorrect (but cute) spellings also tend to annoy a
+ large subset of people. Also, people who have learned English
+ as a second language often question their own knowledge upon
+ seeing a word that they know but spelled differently. ("I
+ guess I've always been spelling "funxion" incorrectly. How
+ embarrassing!")
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ By now you may be saying to yourself, "This is all very
+ silly...people who have to know how to spell a name will learn
+ it and that's that." While it is true that some people will
+ learn the spelling, it will eventually cause problems
+ somewhere.
+
+ For example, one day a machine named "pythagoris" (sic) went
+ awry and began sending a tremendous number of messages to the
+ site administrator's computer. The administrator, who wasn't a
+ very good speller to begin with, had never seen this machine
+ before (someone else had set it up and named it), but he had to
+ deal with it since it was clogging up the network as well as
+ bogging down his own machine which was logging all the errors.
+ Needless to say, he had to look it up every time he needed to
+ spell "pythagoris". (He suspected there was an abbreviation,
+ but he would have had to log into yet another computer (the
+ local nameserver) to find out and the network was too jammed to
+ waste time doing that.)
+
+ Avoid domain names.
+
+ For technical reasons, domain names should be avoided. In
+ particular, name resolution of non-absolute hostnames is
+ problematic. Resolvers will check names against domains before
+ checking them against hostnames. But we have seen instances of
+ mailers that refuse to treat single token names as domains.
+ For example, assume that you mail to "libes@rutgers" from
+ yale.edu. Depending upon the implementation, the mail may go
+ to rutgers.edu or rutgers.yale.edu (assuming both exist).
+
+ Avoid domain-like names.
+
+ Domain names are either organizational (e.g., cia.gov) or
+ geographical (e.g., dallas.tx.us). Using anything like these
+ tends to imply some connection. For example, the name "tahiti"
+ sounds like it means you are located there. This is confusing
+ if it is really somewhere else (e.g., "tahiti.cia.gov is
+ located in Langley, Virginia? I thought it was the CIA's
+ Tahiti office!"). If it really is located there, the name
+ implies that it is the only computer there. If this isn't
+ wrong now, it inevitably will be.
+
+ There are some organizational and geographical names that work
+ fine. These are exactly the ones that do not function well as
+ domain names. For example, amorphous names such as rivers,
+ mythological places and other impossibilities are very
+ suitable. ("earth" is not yet a domain name.)
+
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 4]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ Don't use antagonistic or otherwise embarrassing names.
+
+ Words like "moron" or "twit" are good names if no one else is
+ going to see them. But if you ever give someone a demo on your
+ machine, you may find that they are distracted by seeing a
+ nasty word on your screen. (Maybe their spouse called them
+ that this morning.) Why bother taking the chance that they
+ will be turned off by something completely irrelevant to your
+ demo.
+
+ Don't use digits at the beginning of the name.
+
+ Many programs accept a numerical internet address as well as a
+ name. Unfortunately, some programs do not correctly
+ distinguish between the two and may be fooled, for example, by
+ a string beginning with a decimal digit.
+
+ Names consisting entirely of hexadecimal digits, such as
+ "beef", are also problematic, since they can be interpreted
+ entirely as hexadecimal numbers as well as alphabetic strings.
+
+ Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in a name.
+
+ Your own computer may handle punctuation or control characters
+ in a name, but most others do not. If you ever expect to
+ connect your computer to a heterogeneous network, you can count
+ on a variety of interpretations of non-alphanumeric characters
+ in names. Network conventions on this are surprisingly
+ nonstandard.
+
+ Don't expect case to be preserved.
+
+ Upper and lowercase characters look the same to a great deal of
+ internet software, often under the assumption that it is doing
+ you a favor. It may seem appropriate to capitalize a name the
+ same way you might do it in English, but convention dictates
+ that computer names appear all lowercase. (And it saves
+ holding down the shift key.)
+
+ Now that we've heard what not to do, here are some suggestions on
+ names that work well.
+
+ Use words/names that are rarely used.
+
+ While a word like "typical" or "up" (see above) isn't computer
+ jargon, it is just too likely to arise in discussion and throw
+ off one's concentration while determining the correct referent.
+ Instead, use words like "lurch" or "squire" which are unlikely
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 5]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ to cause any confusion.
+
+ You might feel it is safe to use the name "jose" just because
+ no one is named that in your group, but you will have a problem
+ if you should happen to hire Jose. A name like "sphinx" will
+ be less likely to conflict with new hires.
+
+ Use theme names.
+
+ Naming groups of machines in a common way is very popular, and
+ enhances communality while displaying depth of knowledge as
+ well as imagination. A simple example is to use colors, such
+ as "red" and "blue". Personality can be injected by choices
+ such as "aqua" and "crimson".
+
+ Certain sets are finite, such as the seven dwarfs. When you
+ order your first seven computers, keep in mind that you will
+ probably get more next year. Colors will never run out.
+
+ Some more suggestions are: mythical places (e.g., Midgard,
+ Styx, Paradise), mythical people (e.g., Procne, Tereus, Zeus),
+ killers (e.g., Cain, Burr, Boleyn), babies (e.g., colt, puppy,
+ tadpole, elver), collectives (e.g., passel, plague, bevy,
+ covey), elements (e.g., helium, argon, zinc), flowers (e.g.,
+ tulip, peony, lilac, arbutus). Get the idea?
+
+ Use real words.
+
+ Random strings are inappropriate for the same reason that they
+ are so useful for passwords. They are hard to remember. Use
+ real words.
+
+ Don't worry about reusing someone else's hostname.
+
+ Extremely well-known hostnames such as "sri-nic" and "uunet"
+ should be avoided since they are understood in conversation as
+ absolute addresses even without a domain. In all other cases,
+ the local domain is assumed to qualify single-part hostnames.
+ This is similar to the way phone numbers are qualified by an
+ area code when dialed from another area.
+
+ In other words, if you have choosen a reasonable name, you do
+ not have to worry that it has already been used in another
+ domain. The number of hosts in a bottom-level domain is small,
+ so it shouldn't be hard to pick a name unique only to that
+ domain.
+
+
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 6]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+ There is always room for an exception.
+
+ I don't think any explanation is needed here. However, let me
+ add that if you later decide to change a name (to something
+ sensible like you should have chosen in the first place), you
+ are going to be amazed at the amount of pain awaiting you. No
+ matter how easy the manuals suggest it is to change a name, you
+ will find that lots of obscure software has rapidly accumulated
+ which refers to that computer using that now-ugly name. It all
+ has to be found and changed. People mailing to you from other
+ sites have to be told. And you will have to remember that
+ names on old backup media labels correspond to different names.
+
+ I could go on but it would be easier just to forget this
+ guideline exists.
+
+Conclusion
+
+ Most people don't have the opportunity to name more than one or two
+ computers, while site administrators name large numbers of them. By
+ choosing a name wisely, both user and administrator will have an
+ easier time of remembering, discussing and typing the names of their
+ computers.
+
+ I have tried to formalize useful guidelines for naming computers,
+ along with plenty of examples to make my points obvious. Having been
+ both a user and site administrator, many of these anecdotes come from
+ real experiences which I have no desire to relive. Hopefully, you
+ will avoid all of the pitfalls I have discussed by choosing your
+ computer's name wisely.
+
+Credits
+
+ Thanks to the following people for suggesting some of these
+ guidelines and participating in numerous discussions on computer
+ naming: Ed Barkmeyer, Peter Brown, Chuck Hedrick, Ken Manheimer, and
+ Scott Paisley.
+
+ This essay first appeared in the Communications of the ACM, November,
+ 1989, along with a Gary Larson cartoon reprinted with permission of
+ United Press Syndicate. The text is not subject to copyright, since
+ it is work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
+ However, the author, CACM, and NIST request that this credit appear
+ with the article whenever it is reprinted.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Libes [Page 7]
+
+RFC 1178 Name Your Computer August 1990
+
+
+References
+
+ [1] Libes, D., "Choosing a Name for Your Computer", Communications
+ of the ACM, Vol. 32, No. 11, Pg. 1289, November 1989.
+
+ [2] Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities",
+ RFC 1034, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
+
+Security Considerations
+
+ Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
+
+Author's Address
+
+ Don Libes
+ Integrated Systems Group
+ National Institute of Standards and Technology
+ Gaithersburg, MD 20899
+
+ Phone: (301) 975-3535
+
+ EMail: libes@cme.nist.gov
+
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