I’ve got a network of about 20 PCs which at the moment are named according to the regular user, this makes for headaches when people leave or move about, as renaming the machine means that other PCs on the network can’t find the shared resources anymore.
So, your suggestions please for a range of names that I can use - mythological ones are out as everyone else seems to use them (scarecly a day goes by when I don’t get emails routed through Valhalla.Artemis.Zeus.Hercules.etc)
I also need something fairly international (what I mean is that I’m British, so American talk-show host names would mean nothing)
I thought about vegetable names, (mine being Mangetout of course), but potato, parsnip, turnip, cabbage aren’t going to work, are they?
So, I’m looking at Major rivers of the world (=names of wombles) or capital cities(yawn), or can you suggest something else?
For a smallish network, you can do what I did on my home network. Name them after elements. I had mine correspond to the last portion of the ip address, but there’s no real reason to do that.
Other ideas: animals (Koala, Tiger, etc.)
famous battles/wars (gettysburg, waterloo, …)
candy bars (snickers, milkyway, twix, …)
You could name them after organs and tissues in the body, so that when they are all connected you have a full person, so to speak (of course the main server would be the brain, or maybe the heart…)
I must be very dull. I named our computers Computer1, Computer2, etc., and I put a sticker on each unit with its name. I obviously need to get out more.
I hate to be a party pooper but have you thought of what kind of growth you might have. We used to use a mountain naming scheme with ski resorts for servers. We outgrew it. It was difficult and annoying when we got to 100+ users. When we combined with several other groups and went over 1000+ nodes we went boring.
We now use Country code + City Code + Department + OS Type + ID number
My box is [US][DEN][MIS][0][001] For US-Denver-Information Services-Windows 2000-First machine in the department. It becomes really helpful when something goes wrong to quickly identify the machine and user. Besides I feel it looks and feels more professional. It is easier to get funding saying “USDENSFS001 is running out of disk space” than “Grumpy is droping packets again.” But ymmv.
Why not use cars, mercedes-benz, bmw, aston-martin, jaguar bentely, lamborghini, audi… If you use an idea from the boards let us know what you go with.
I’ve known a few naming conventions… one firm I worked for used degrees and other educational qualifications(we had machines called MA, BSC, and even ELEVENPLUS); others have used cartoon characters, or names of constellations (and other heavenly bodies).
(When they ran out of constellations, they moved on to individual stars - at one point, being regarded as the fount of all trivial knowledge, I was asked to compile a list of star names that were relatively simple to spell and didn’t all begin with “al” - not as easy as you might think, given the preponderance of Arabic origins for individual star names.)
Mine are named after monsters in the Godzilla universe. So far I have Godzilla, Mothra, Rodan, Gamera, Ghidorah, Megalon, JetJaguar, MechaGodzilla, and Angilas.
But definitely choose a scheme that will handle your growth. I’m already scraping and searching the internet every time I add a new comp to the network. I guess the next ones will be Smog, Kong, then MonsterZero (even though it’s just another name for Ghidorah).
Others I’ve thought of are Cartoon superheroes (almost unlimited supply there, just watch cartoon network for a week), Cartoon characters in general, US or world cities, etc.
I really like the idea of naming them after the periodic table, too. I think I’d like being able to say “Californium just melted down.” Naming them for people responding to the thread is a really cool idea too.
“Damn it, PlasticBryan can’t ping missbunny, and there’s a bottleneck at ZumbaTheCat. And slortar isn’t even showing up!”
If the machines have a specific function use the function as part of the name EX:
SQL2000P1 = Sequel 2000 Production #1
SQL2000P2 = Sequel 2000 Production #2
SQL2000T1 = Sequel 2000 Test #1
SQL2000T2 = Sequel 2000 Test #2
CRP1 = Crystal Reports Production #1
FTPP1 = FTP Server Production #1
I just thought of another idea. You can use breeds of dogs boxer, poodle, mastiff, etc. etc. The AKC recognizes 160+ breeds of dogs so you should have plenty of options.
Our computers here are named after dog breeds, except in the training room where they’re named after cat breeds. Just make sure you spell them right! (Unlike some people around here, grumble grumble)
Anecdote:
The very first network I had any significant amount of experience with had 7 workstations and one printer. The printer’s name was Snow White. I’ll let you figure out the rest for yourself.
Suggestions:
[li]Place names. I like to use them for passwords myself, as they let me do themes for similar resources.[/li]
[li]Star Trek characters. Nice because you can move up a series when you replace machines: replace Kirk with Picard with Sisko, etc. Use minor characters or fun bad guys when you run out of regular crew. I imagine by the time you get down to machine 20 you’ll be using names like “Cochrane” and “Lwaxana.” :)[/li]
[*]I second the first 20 posters idea since, by my count, that would include me.
