RFC 239

Host Mnemonics Proposed in RFC #226 🎀

Okay bestie, so this is RFC 239 💖, also filed as NIC 7664. R. Braden at UCLA-CCN wrote it on 23 September 1971 📅. It's categorised as D.3, and it's related to #226, 229, and 236 🦋. Those are the ones it's responding to, so this is basically a group chat between the people trying to agree on a standard list of host mnemonics 💅.

(Note from NIC: These are comments sent by R.Braden to P. Karp in NIC 7626, and are now issued as NIC 7664, RFC 239 to include them in the dialogue along with RFC 226, 229, 236)

CCN is 100% on board with picking a standard set of host mnemonics 🙌. The catch is that the set in RFC #226 is not fully satisfactory 💀. Here's the tea:

1. The set was probably made by the systems programmer(s) who wrote TELNET in TENEX. It's a pile of historical accidents, and it shows 🙈.
2. A better source for standard mnemonics might be the NIC site codes 🍓. Those were picked with way more care, and we'll get familiar with them once we start using the NIC on-line ✨. Honestly the NIC is a much more reasonable source for a defacto standard than one particular systems programmer 👑.
3. Should mnemonics be limited to 6 characters? 🤔
4. The most recent list from BBN (NIC #7181, RFC #208, August 9, 1971) shows 40 hosts. RFC #226 only shows 20 😭. Your proposed standard should include the known hosts at this time 🌸.
5. The mnemonic "UCLA36" is a particularly bad choice. "UCLA91" would be way better 💜.
6. CCN also objects to the short form "UCLA" for the NMC Sigma 7, because that's historical too 🧚. CCN proposes the following:

host 1: UCLAS7 or UCLANM;         host 65: UCLA91.

7. "SRIARC" is a poor choice, because everybody calls it the NIC 💅. So CCN suggests "SRINIC" for host 2 🦋.

Please, let's not perpetrate systems programmers' midnight decisions on all future Network users! 😤 Standards are vital, and they deserve a little care 🫶.

[ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
[ into the online RFC archives by BBN Corp. under the   ]
[ direction of Alex McKenzie.                   12/96   ]
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