Network host name conventions

[Halcyon]

I've just finished re-designing my home network and just wanted to share one of the things I've been doing -- HOST NAME CONVENTIONS.

Previously, they were a mess. There were devices showing up on my network that I had no idea what they were (or even where they were).

I think I've finally found a standard that works (for me):

GS-NN-MMMMMM-UU

Code: [Select]

Maximum length: 15 characters.

G denotes GROUP (e.g.: C = Clients, N = Network Infrastructure, S = Server)
S denotes SUB-GROUP or role (e.g: D = Desktop PC, G = Gaming console, S = Switch, W = Wireless radio, P = Phone etc...)
NN denotes SITE NUMBER (for this I use a hexadecimal value which is the street number of my house, this helps identify devices on the network at other sites)
MMMMMM denotes MODEL or device description
UU denotes UNIQUE IDENTIFIER (this field is optional; a hexadecimal value which uniquely identifies devices which are the same make/model)

Some examples are:

CM-7F-SONOS1-02  --  A media device (in this example, a 3rd Sonos Play 1 speaker)
NW-7F-UAPPRO-00 -- A Wireless access point (Ubiquiti UAP-AC Pro)
SO-7F-RADIUS -- A Radius Server, since there is likely to only ever be one at this site, the unique ID is dropped (and allows for 3 more characters if required).
SN-7F-NAS-00 -- My primary NAS server.
SN-20-NAS-00 -- A NAS server at another site.

I went with hex values because it allows for up to 255 unique values.

With a proper naming convention, I can look at a list of hosts on the network and straight away identify what it is, where it is and what it does. I hope this inspires others.

[German_EE]

Boring, sorry.

Hermes         Firewall and Internet connection management (God of messengers)
Apollo           Media PC (God of entertainment)
Hephaestus  Workshop PC (God of fire, metalwork and craftsmen)
Hera             Girlfriend's laptop (Queen of the Gods)
Zeus             My laptop (King of the Gods)

Note that I'm not religious, it's just that Clash of the Titans was my favorite movie when I was a kid. I had to look up Hephaestus though 

[Halcyon]

Boring, sorry.

I'll cop that. :-)

I did try the "creative names" thing before, but I just kept forgetting what was what, especially with managed switches, firewalls etc... I'd say all up I probably have 30-40 devices on my network. I think my router/proxy back then was called OSIRIS (an old NT4.0 box).

[paulca]

There has been quite a bit of research into this stuff and I recall the pros and cons between pure and impure names comes down to perspective.

If you are designing a network, drawing network diagrams and managing a load of machines then impure names such as yours are more precise and informative.  But, from a users perspective, they tend to associate with machines, they even anthropomorphise them.  A name like Apollo or Athena is easier to emotionally associate with.

The other downside with your host names is that in large networks with more than one network engineer, or hundred of them, you will need a hostname registry supporting fairly concurrent access for adding/removing hosts to prevent duplicates and namespace wastage.  The solution, from the engineering people is often to add uuid hashes to hostnames or just using a unique hex entirely, giving you horrible names like:  a8-fe-b6-a2.blah.blahblah.company.net.  It's not very human.  Note the hex is not (always) the IP address, usually isn't.

A suggestion is to use aliases. For example.

CM-7F-SONOS1-02     IN    CNAME  dion
SN-7F-NAS-00 IN CNAME athena

Or you can have service based records.  Consider what you care about more, the actual box that your users will probably never see or the service it provides.  For example:

CM-7F-SONOS1-02     IN    CNAME  media

You can then repoint the media service to a new box you get setup over Christmas and have.

newbox  IN  CNAME media 

If you run public DNS, mail or WWW you can have hundreds (or thousands) of aliases, they form a hierarchy which allows you to remap entire banks of servers between services, without loss of service.

You can link your DHCP to your DNS to get dynamic records with UUIDs based on hardware addresses.   These are handy when you don't even remember what network your server is in.  If you know it's hardware address you can work it out by querying the DNS server for it's UUID alias and even reverse look up it's other aliases.

[German_EE]

One other thing. I once did some work at a place where they were running a brand-new IBM Z Series and the I.T. Manager ran a competition to name the thing. The winning name was Denzel as, quote, "the machine was big, black and sexy". Each user therefore logs on to Denzel first thing in the morning.

[HoracioDos]

Boring but easy to remember names.

iotp = raspberry pi iot printer.
hpprinter = raspberry pi/ Hp print server.
piweather = raspberry pi weather station server.
piplantino = raspberry pi tweeting pot/plant

Models names for notebooks/phones/tablets
U47VC = ASUS notebook
Vostro = Dell Notebook
X1687 = Moto G5 Plus phone

[Brumby]

Peanuts
Peppermint
Snoopy
Linus
RedBaron
... and at one stage...
Spike

There are some others - but they just run with an ID that doesn't follow the above schema.

[BradC]

Westley, buttercup, inigo, fezzik, max, humperdinck, vizzini and some boring descriptive stuff.

[rob.manderson]

BigBastard - our whs2011 fileserver
FatBastard - our Win7 TV recorder
FastBastard - my computer
MusicalBastard - the computer I use for writing music
FlatBastard - my tablet (actually doesn't have a hostname that I can find but it fits the pattern  )
BastardToGo - our laptop (actually long since gone, hate laptops with a passion!)

and my wife's computer?

TheBitch - when I was doing the inevitable replacement machine I asked her what name she wanted for it - and *she* chose TheBitch, so there!

[rdl]

I assemble most of what I use myself and mostly name things after the hardware, so I have little trouble remembering what is what. I do have a pretty simple setup though.

Core2Duo
i5-3570K
FREENAS
Brix1900
etc...

[German_EE]

There's always the classical approach

Kirk          Main server

Spock      Science station

Uhura      Internet and comms

Scotty     Workshop

McCoy    ?

Sulu         GPS receiver

Chekov   ?

[amspire]

For one company with 8 workstations, I named the PC's colours:

Red, Blue, Purple, etc

and I printed out big labels with the a big block of the colour using an inkjet printer. The idea was you could just look at a workstation from across the room and know the name from the colour.

Over time however, the printed colours changed due to UV and probably the paper. So I had a PC for example called "Grey" that turned into Brown. Purple and Blue became identical.

[Monkeh]

For one company with 8 workstations, I named the PC's colours:

Red, Blue, Purple, etc

and I printed out big labels with the a big block of the colour using an inkjet printer. The idea was you could just look at a workstation from across the room and know the name from the colour.

Over time however, the printed colours changed due to UV and probably the paper. So I had a PC for example called "Grey" that turned into Brown. Purple and Blue became identical.

Next time use the rattle can.