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| Come scegliere il nome di un computer. | | Come scegliere il nome di un computer. |
| E' un documento RFC http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html
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| <pre>
| | E' un documento: |
| Network Working Group D. Libes
| | [http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1178.html RFC1178 - Choosing a name for your computer] |
| Request for Comments: 1178 Integrated Systems Group/NIST
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| FYI: 5 August 1990
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| Choosing a Name for Your Computer
| | Spunti: |
| | | *[http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_di_divinit%C3%A0#Divinit.C3.A0_romane Lista di divinità - Wikipedia] |
| Status of this Memo
| | *[http://www.godchecker.com/ Godchecker.com - Your Guide To The Gods. Mythology with a twist!] |
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| This FYI RFC is a republication of a Communications of the ACM
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| article on guidelines on what to do and what not to do when naming
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| your computer [1]. This memo provides information for the Internet
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| community. It does not specify any standard.
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| Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
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| Abstract
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| In order to easily distinguish between multiple computers, we give
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| them names. Experience has taught us that it is as easy to choose
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| bad names as it is to choose good ones. This essay presents
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| guidelines for deciding what makes a name good or bad.
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| Keywords: domain name system, naming conventions, computer
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| administration, computer network management
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| Introduction
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| As soon as you deal with more than one computer, you need to
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| distinguish between them. For example, to tell your system
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| administrator that your computer is busted, you might say, "Hey Ken.
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| Goon is down!"
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| Computers also have to be able to distinguish between themselves.
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| Thus, when sending mail to a colleague at another computer, you might
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| use the command "mail libes@goon".
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| In both cases, "goon" refers to a particular computer. How the name
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| is actually dereferenced by a human or computer need not concern us
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| here. This essay is only concerned with choosing a "good" name. (It
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| is assumed that the reader has a basic understanding of the domain
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| name system as described by [2].)
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| By picking a "good" name for your computer, you can avoid a number of
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| problems that people stumble over again and again.
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| Here are some guidelines on what NOT to do.
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| Don't overload other terms already in common use.
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| Using a word that has strong semantic implications in the
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| current context will cause confusion. This is especially true
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| in conversation where punctuation is not obvious and grammar is
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| often incorrect.
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| For example, a distributed database had been built on top of
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| several computers. Each one had a different name. One machine
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| was named "up", as it was the only one that accepted updates.
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| Conversations would sound like this: "Is up down?" and "Boot
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| the machine up." followed by "Which machine?"
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| While it didn't take long to catch on and get used to this
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| zaniness, it was annoying when occasionally your mind would
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| stumble, and you would have to stop and think about each word
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| in a sentence. It is as if, all of a sudden, English has
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| become a foreign language.
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| Don't choose a name after a project unique to that machine.
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| A manufacturing project had named a machine "shop" since it was
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| going to be used to control a number of machines on a shop
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| floor. A while later, a new machine was acquired to help with
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| some of the processing. Needless to say, it couldn't be called
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| "shop" as well. Indeed, both machines ended up performing more
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| specific tasks, allowing more precision in naming. A year
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| later, five new machines were installed and the original one
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| was moved to an unrelated project. It is simply impossible to
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| choose generic names that remain appropriate for very long.
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| Of course, they could have called the second one "shop2" and so
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| on. But then one is really only distinguishing machines by
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| their number. You might as well just call them "1", "2", and
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| "3". The only time this kind of naming scheme is appropriate
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| is when you have a lot of machines and there are no reasons for
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| any human to distinguish between them. For example, a master
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| computer might be controlling an array of one hundred
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| computers. In this case, it makes sense to refer to them with
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| the array indices.
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| While computers aren't quite analogous to people, their names
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| are. Nobody expects to learn much about a person by their
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| name. Just because a person is named "Don" doesn't mean he is
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| the ruler of the world (despite what the "Choosing a Name for
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| your Baby" books say). In reality, names are just arbitrary
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| tags. You cannot tell what a person does for a living, what
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| their hobbies are, and so on.
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| Don't use your own name.
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| Even if a computer is sitting on your desktop, it is a mistake
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| to name it after yourself. This is another case of
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| overloading, in which statements become ambiguous. Does "give
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| the disk drive to don" refer to a person or computer?
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| Even using your initials (or some other moniker) is
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| unsatisfactory. What happens if I get a different machine
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| after a year? Someone else gets stuck with "don" and I end up
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| living with "jim". The machines can be renamed, but that is
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| excess work and besides, a program that used a special
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| peripheral or database on "don" would start failing when it
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| wasn't found on the "new don".
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| It is especially tempting to name your first computer after
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| yourself, but think about it. Do you name any of your other
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| possessions after yourself? No. Your dog has its own name, as
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| do your children. If you are one of those who feel so inclined
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| to name your car and other objects, you certainly don't reuse
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| your own name. Otherwise you would have a great deal of
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| trouble distinguishing between them in speech.
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| For the same reason, it follows that naming your computer the
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| same thing as your car or another possession is a mistake.
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| Don't use long names.
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| This is hard to quantify, but experience has shown that names
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| longer than eight characters simply annoy people.
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| Most systems will allow prespecified abbreviations, but why not
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| choose a name that you don't have to abbreviate to begin with?
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| This removes any chance of confusion.
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| Avoid alternate spellings.
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| Once we called a machine "czek". In discussion, people
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| continually thought we were talking about a machine called
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| "check". Indeed, "czek" isn't even a word (although "Czech"
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| is).
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| Purposely incorrect (but cute) spellings also tend to annoy a
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| large subset of people. Also, people who have learned English
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| as a second language often question their own knowledge upon
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| seeing a word that they know but spelled differently. ("I
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| guess I've always been spelling "funxion" incorrectly. How
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| embarrassing!")
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| By now you may be saying to yourself, "This is all very
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| silly...people who have to know how to spell a name will learn
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| it and that's that." While it is true that some people will
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| learn the spelling, it will eventually cause problems
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| somewhere.
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| For example, one day a machine named "pythagoris" (sic) went
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| awry and began sending a tremendous number of messages to the
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| site administrator's computer. The administrator, who wasn't a
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| very good speller to begin with, had never seen this machine
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| before (someone else had set it up and named it), but he had to
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| deal with it since it was clogging up the network as well as
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| bogging down his own machine which was logging all the errors.
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| Needless to say, he had to look it up every time he needed to
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| spell "pythagoris". (He suspected there was an abbreviation,
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| but he would have had to log into yet another computer (the
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| local nameserver) to find out and the network was too jammed to
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| waste time doing that.)
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| Avoid domain names.
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| For technical reasons, domain names should be avoided. In
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| particular, name resolution of non-absolute hostnames is
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| problematic. Resolvers will check names against domains before
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| checking them against hostnames. But we have seen instances of
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| mailers that refuse to treat single token names as domains.
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| For example, assume that you mail to "libes@rutgers" from
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| yale.edu. Depending upon the implementation, the mail may go
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| to rutgers.edu or rutgers.yale.edu (assuming both exist).
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| Avoid domain-like names.
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| Domain names are either organizational (e.g., cia.gov) or
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| geographical (e.g., dallas.tx.us). Using anything like these
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| tends to imply some connection. For example, the name "tahiti"
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| sounds like it means you are located there. This is confusing
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| if it is really somewhere else (e.g., "tahiti.cia.gov is
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| located in Langley, Virginia? I thought it was the CIA's
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| Tahiti office!"). If it really is located there, the name
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| implies that it is the only computer there. If this isn't
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| wrong now, it inevitably will be.
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| There are some organizational and geographical names that work
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| fine. These are exactly the ones that do not function well as
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| domain names. For example, amorphous names such as rivers,
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| mythological places and other impossibilities are very
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| suitable. ("earth" is not yet a domain name.)
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| Don't use antagonistic or otherwise embarrassing names.
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| Words like "moron" or "twit" are good names if no one else is
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| going to see them. But if you ever give someone a demo on your
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| machine, you may find that they are distracted by seeing a
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| nasty word on your screen. (Maybe their spouse called them
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| that this morning.) Why bother taking the chance that they
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| will be turned off by something completely irrelevant to your
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| demo.
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| Don't use digits at the beginning of the name.
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| Many programs accept a numerical internet address as well as a
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| name. Unfortunately, some programs do not correctly
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| distinguish between the two and may be fooled, for example, by
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| a string beginning with a decimal digit.
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| Names consisting entirely of hexadecimal digits, such as
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| "beef", are also problematic, since they can be interpreted
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| entirely as hexadecimal numbers as well as alphabetic strings.
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| Don't use non-alphanumeric characters in a name.
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| Your own computer may handle punctuation or control characters
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| in a name, but most others do not. If you ever expect to
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| connect your computer to a heterogeneous network, you can count
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| on a variety of interpretations of non-alphanumeric characters
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| in names. Network conventions on this are surprisingly
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| nonstandard.
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| Don't expect case to be preserved.
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| Upper and lowercase characters look the same to a great deal of
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| internet software, often under the assumption that it is doing
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| you a favor. It may seem appropriate to capitalize a name the
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| same way you might do it in English, but convention dictates
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| that computer names appear all lowercase. (And it saves
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| holding down the shift key.)
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| Now that we've heard what not to do, here are some suggestions on
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| names that work well.
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| Use words/names that are rarely used.
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| While a word like "typical" or "up" (see above) isn't computer
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| jargon, it is just too likely to arise in discussion and throw
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| off one's concentration while determining the correct referent.
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| Instead, use words like "lurch" or "squire" which are unlikely
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| to cause any confusion.
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| You might feel it is safe to use the name "jose" just because
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| no one is named that in your group, but you will have a problem
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| if you should happen to hire Jose. A name like "sphinx" will
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| be less likely to conflict with new hires.
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| Use theme names.
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| Naming groups of machines in a common way is very popular, and
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| enhances communality while displaying depth of knowledge as
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| well as imagination. A simple example is to use colors, such
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| as "red" and "blue". Personality can be injected by choices
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| such as "aqua" and "crimson".
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| Certain sets are finite, such as the seven dwarfs. When you
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| order your first seven computers, keep in mind that you will
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| probably get more next year. Colors will never run out.
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| Some more suggestions are: mythical places (e.g., Midgard,
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| Styx, Paradise), mythical people (e.g., Procne, Tereus, Zeus),
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| killers (e.g., Cain, Burr, Boleyn), babies (e.g., colt, puppy,
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| tadpole, elver), collectives (e.g., passel, plague, bevy,
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| covey), elements (e.g., helium, argon, zinc), flowers (e.g.,
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| tulip, peony, lilac, arbutus). Get the idea?
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| Use real words.
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| Random strings are inappropriate for the same reason that they
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| are so useful for passwords. They are hard to remember. Use
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| real words.
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| Don't worry about reusing someone else's hostname.
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| Extremely well-known hostnames such as "sri-nic" and "uunet"
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| should be avoided since they are understood in conversation as
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| absolute addresses even without a domain. In all other cases,
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| the local domain is assumed to qualify single-part hostnames.
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| This is similar to the way phone numbers are qualified by an
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| area code when dialed from another area.
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| In other words, if you have choosen a reasonable name, you do
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| not have to worry that it has already been used in another
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| domain. The number of hosts in a bottom-level domain is small,
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| so it shouldn't be hard to pick a name unique only to that
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| domain.
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| There is always room for an exception.
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| I don't think any explanation is needed here. However, let me
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| add that if you later decide to change a name (to something
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| sensible like you should have chosen in the first place), you
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| are going to be amazed at the amount of pain awaiting you. No
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| matter how easy the manuals suggest it is to change a name, you
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| will find that lots of obscure software has rapidly accumulated
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| which refers to that computer using that now-ugly name. It all
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| has to be found and changed. People mailing to you from other
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| sites have to be told. And you will have to remember that
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| names on old backup media labels correspond to different names.
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| I could go on but it would be easier just to forget this
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| guideline exists.
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| Conclusion
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| Most people don't have the opportunity to name more than one or two
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| computers, while site administrators name large numbers of them. By
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| choosing a name wisely, both user and administrator will have an
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| easier time of remembering, discussing and typing the names of their
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| computers.
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| I have tried to formalize useful guidelines for naming computers,
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| along with plenty of examples to make my points obvious. Having been
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| both a user and site administrator, many of these anecdotes come from
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| real experiences which I have no desire to relive. Hopefully, you
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| will avoid all of the pitfalls I have discussed by choosing your
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| computer's name wisely.
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| Credits
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| Thanks to the following people for suggesting some of these
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| guidelines and participating in numerous discussions on computer
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| naming: Ed Barkmeyer, Peter Brown, Chuck Hedrick, Ken Manheimer, and
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| Scott Paisley.
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| This essay first appeared in the Communications of the ACM, November,
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| 1989, along with a Gary Larson cartoon reprinted with permission of
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| United Press Syndicate. The text is not subject to copyright, since
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| it is work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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| However, the author, CACM, and NIST request that this credit appear
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| with the article whenever it is reprinted.
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| References
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| [1] Libes, D., "Choosing a Name for Your Computer", Communications
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| of the ACM, Vol. 32, No. 11, Pg. 1289, November 1989.
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| [2] Mockapetris, P., "Domain Names - Concepts and Facilities",
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| RFC 1034, USC/Information Sciences Institute, November 1987.
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| Security Considerations
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| Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
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| Author's Address
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| Don Libes
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| Integrated Systems Group
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| National Institute of Standards and Technology
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| Gaithersburg, MD 20899
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| Phone: (301) 975-3535
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| EMail: libes@cme.nist.gov
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| </pre>
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