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rfc:rfc1178

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

Libes [Page 8]

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