Thoughts on best practice for naming router infrastructure in DNS

Fri Jun 29 15:05:44 UTC 2007

Then you get some networks who name all the routers after cheeses or 
characters from bill and ben the flowerpot men.

--
Leigh

Mark Tinka wrote:
> On Friday 15 June 2007 00:27, Olsen, Jason wrote:
>
>   
>> So, what practices do you folks follow?  What are the up
>> and downsides you encounter?
>>     
>
> At my previous employer, we came up with a formula that we 
> were happy with. For reverse DNS, it involves:
>
> * defining the interface
> * defining the device function
> * defining the local location
> * defining the international location
>
> o device interface could be:
>
> 	fa-0-0-0
> 	gi-1-0-0
> 	s0-0-0
> 	pos-1-0
> 	tun0
>
>   this also takes subinterfaces into account; for cases where
>   we've had to classify a switch VI the "routes" IP traffic:
>
> 	vlan100
>
> o device function could be:
>
> 	br-gw (border router)
> 	cr-gw (core router)
> 	cr-sw (core switch)
> 	edge-gw (edge router)
> 	edge-sw (edge switch)
>
> o device local location; we normally define this using the
>   IATA 3-letter international city/airport code:
>
> 	LAX (Los Angeles
> 	ABV (Abuja)
> 	DXB (Dubai)
> 	CPH (Copenhagen)
> 	MEL (Melbourne)
> 	HKG (Hong Kong)
> 	
>   it is not uncommon to have towns or cities being
>   abbreviated by the locals in some other way, either
>   because they do not care for the IATA code :-), or if
>   they do, are not included in the IATA database; in this
>   case, you may use your imagination; for us, depending on
>   the length of the name, we spell out the full town's name.
>
> o device international location is easily defined if your TLD
>   is based on a country, e.g., .uk, .ae, .ke, .za, .na, e.t.c.
>   for situations where your domain name would end in a
>   non-region specific TLD, e.g., .com, .net, .org, e.t.c., one
>   would prefix a state or country (in the case of a global
>   network) to the domain name, e.g.:
>
> 	.uk.somelargenetwork.com
> 	.za.somelargenetwork.com
>
>   things could get interesting if you setup multiple PoP's in
>   another location that would still fall under your .com or
>   other such TLD, but there are ways to fix that :-).
>
> So, a final example of, say, core router number 5 and edge 
> switch number 3 located in a datacentre of a local Australian 
> ISP in Melbourne:
>
> gi-0-0-1.cr-gw-5-mel.somenetworknetwork.com.au
> vlan876.edge-sw-3-mel.somenetwork.com.au
>
> Say a large network, whose home network was the US, decided to 
> setup a single PoP in Johannesburg that included one core 
> router and one border router, but whose domain name ended 
> in .net, it would look something like this:
>
> pos-3-0.cr-gw-1-jnb.za.somelargenetwork.net
> gi-0-0-1.br-gw-1-jnb.za.somelargenetwork.net
>
> You could then use the script Joe Abley kindly posted earlier 
> to automatically generate your entries.
>
> Of course, this was our own approach. Different folks have 
> different strokes.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mark.
>   