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
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.