Network Naming Conventions

Barry Shein bzs at world.std.com
Sat Mar 13 20:49:37 UTC 2010


On March 13, 2010 at 10:53 ck at sandcastl.es (ck) wrote:
 > i believe in keeping host names as short as possible, so to start, i

At BU we brought down about 1/3 of the internet (no joke!) around 1985
when our very first host table entries to SRI-NIC contained single
letter hosts (like a.bu.edu) and names starting with a digit (I
remember 3b.bu.edu) which put the HOSTS table to /etc/hosts converter
into an infinite loop filling up BSD root disks which back then would
invariably hang/crash the OS (No space in /tmp No space in /tmp No
space in /tmp No space in /tmp....)

I think there's a write-up by me in an old RISKS digest from the time
and it was quite a flap on the TCP-IP list ("BU Joins The Internet!")

Completely inadvertent but it was probably as disruptive, relatively,
as the Morris worm.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

The World              | bzs at TheWorld.com           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD        | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada
Software Tool & Die    | Public Access Internet     | SINCE 1989     *oo*




More information about the NANOG mailing list