NIC view of standard host names

Network Working Group                                  Richard W. Watson
Request for Comments: 237                                 October 5, 1971
NIC: 7662


                 The Nic's View of Standard Host Names

   The NIC strongly favors standardization of host names. People will
   get used to the names appearing on documents coming from or through
   the NIC and so we would like the ones used by NIC and the ones used
   in Telnets to agree.  In the absence of agreed standard names, we
   have chosen some.  We are not particularly partial to the ones we are
   using, but do feel any standard naming scheme take into account most
   of the following considerations.

      (1)  Names consist of two parts, SITE and HOST, preferably
      separated by a delimiter such as a dash.

      (2)  Site and Host names have some mnemonic value, if possible not
      involving the name of the computer as computers will change, but
      the organization running it will remain.

      (3)  We strongly recommend at least 8 characters be allowed,
      including one delimiter.  The NIC now uses 12 characters maximum.

      (4)  Assuming 8 character names, we recommend that the site name
      be a maximum of 6 characters and that Host names at a given site
      be unique in the first six characters.  Thus, with the delimiter,
      sites desiring to only have 4 characters in their tables can
      accept all characters typed by the user and truncate to 6
      characters and still achieve uniqueness.

      (5)  Once the NWG has set a standard syntax and names for present
      Hosts, the NIC should be responsible for maintaining the standard
      and assigning names to new hosts and other groups involved in
      Network dialogue. Besides hosts there are NIC stations and
      individuals in organizations not on the Net involved in the
      Network dialogue.  The NIC needs to assign names to these Network
      affiliations and will use the rules set by the NWG.



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     [into the online RFC archives by H�l�ne Morin, Viag�nie 10/99]