RFC 237

The Nic's View of Standard Host Names ✨

RFC 237 🎀 by Richard W. Watson, dated October 5, 1971, from the Network Working Group. It's also tagged NIC 7662. The original doesn't say what category it is or whether it obsoletes or updates anything, so I'm not going to guess 🙈

The NIC is obsessed with standardizing host names 💖 okay so the vibe is: people are going to get used to seeing names on documents coming from or through the NIC, so the NIC really wants the names it uses and the names used in Telnets to match 🦋 Since there weren't any agreed standard names yet, the NIC picked some of its own. Not gonna lie, they're not super attached to them 💅 but they do feel any standard naming scheme should take into account most of the considerations below 🌸

1. Names are made of two parts, SITE and HOST, ideally split up by a delimiter like a dash 🧚
2. Site and Host names should be mnemonic if possible ✨ and ideally shouldn't include the name of the computer, because computers change but the organization running them sticks around 👑
3. We strongly recommend allowing at least 8 characters, including one delimiter. The NIC currently uses a max of 12 characters 🔥
4. If we're assuming 8 character names, we recommend the site name be a max of 6 characters, and that Host names at a given site be unique in their first six characters 💀 So with the delimiter, sites that only want 4 characters in their tables can accept everything the user types, chop it down to 6 characters, and still get uniqueness. Genius, periodt 🍓
5. Once the NWG sets a standard syntax and names for the current Hosts, the NIC should be responsible for maintaining that standard and assigning names to new hosts and other groups in Network dialogue 🫶 Hosts aren't the only ones in the mix, though. There are NIC stations too, plus individuals in organizations that aren't on the Net but still take part in Network dialogue. The NIC needs to give names to these Network affiliations and will use the rules the NWG sets 💜

[This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry] [into the online RFC archives by H�l�ne Morin, Viag�nie 10/99]