For a project I am currently working on I stumbled upon the following.
What is the best way to lable and name equipment? Although this applies to
all equipment such as SDH ADMs, IP, ATM etc I realised that it seems to be
hardest to find a sensible convention for IP equipment. Preferably I would
like to find a convention that fits all, but I guess that is utopia.
So, since list contains, PTTs, Telcos, ISPs and wannabees is there any
good common scheme or pointers to something useful?
- kurtis -
Hello,
We are currently trying to resolve the very same issue.
So far we plan to use following scheme:
1) Device name should be concatenation of following parts:
<2 letters of ISO country code>
http://www.bcpl.net/~jspath/isocodes.html
<3 letters of airport city code>
http://www.ufreight.com/faq/airport_code/airport_code_by_ac.html
<3 letters of location>
to be created
<4 letters of device name abbreviations>
to be created -- in case of cisco: model number
<1 letter separator>
arbitrary decided to be capital letter X (no DNS nor arithmetic exp problems)
<1 letter device ordinal>
can be hex if needed
Examples:
USMIANOC3662X1 - Miami Lakes NOC cisco 3662
USMIATPL7206X1 - Miami Teleplace cisco 7206
USMIANAPJM20X1 - Miami NAP Juniper M20
VEBRMPOP2501X1 - Venezuela, Barquisimento POP, VE cisco 2501
VACCSCTV1010X1 - Venezuela, Caracas CANTV collocation, cisco Lightstream 1010
2) We will also create DNS zone ???core.net which will be used in two main ways:
a) reverse DNS lookup, to map IP addresses into hierarchical names, like:
serial1-0-0-128-<customer_name>.USMIATPL3662X1.TelePlace.mia.us.ifxcore.net
This will be mainly used for tools like traceroute, etc.
b) straight DNS lookups of devices itself, like:
USMIATPL3662X1.ifxcore.net
This will be used to get easy access to a device itself (through Loopback),
and due to mnemonic nature of device name should be easy to memorize.
So far the only problem we run into with this scheme is 12 character limit
on hostnames on some boxes.
Przemek
Choose a naming convention, publish it internally, and stick with it.
The above is not meant to sound flippant, however there are numerous ways
that people attach labels to equipment/networks, and people will argue
endlessly about "optimal" naming schemes(I've been involved in more than
one or two discussions on the subject.)
In general I'd suggest trying to choose labels that are
meaningful(others of course will disagree.) Why it's fun to name servers
things like "cerebus" and "archemedies", it's not very helpful in offering
an indication as to the purpose of the machines(and of course some would
argue that is a good thing.)
Some folks like to put airport abbreviations in their labels to attempt to
indicate the geographic location of systems. I don't as there are cities
with multiple airports, national and international airport labels can
conflict, and I frequently find that facilities are actually in different
cities than the nearest airport.
When it all comes down to it, what is important as that you choose a
naming convention that yourself and the people you work with can
understand.
I've got a naming convention somewhere I wrote a while ago if you're
interested in a starting point...
In addition to all the other advice you've gotten, be careful about
using a code outside of your control as part of your labeling scheme.
For example, there was once an engineer who thought it would be keen to
base the name/address of devices to the telephone area code they resided
in. It only took about a year before the local telco made area code
changes rendering the use of the naming scheme meaningless. That was
about 5 years ago and last I heard the scheme is still be used. At
least the mistake is a standardized one. 
John
Here is how we at SAVVIS name our devices -
1) Two letter country designation
2) Four letter telco city identifier
3) A single digit that indicates the facility within that city
Then it diverges for various functions. For example, for our Lucent
switches, there is a period, followed by aa, which indicates a CBX-500, af
which indicates a B-STDX 9000, or ag, which indicates a Gx-550.
For routers, it is a hyphen, followed by a convention for the model of the
router, then the function of the router (almost always c as our edge is
also our core)
For example, there is a circuit going between Columbus and Chicago. It
hits:
usclmb1.aa (CBX-500 in Columbus, OH)
uschcg2.ag (GX-550 taking a long-haul OC12 from Columbus and an OC12
going to the Juniper)
uschcg2-j20c (Juniper M20 in Chicago)
For a Cisco router - it would be uschcg3-c75c (that device actually
exsists too, it's at another location in Chicago) - the 75 indicates it's
a 7513.
...convenient summaries of which are available in the GNU miscfiles
distribution, in colon-delimited text files for easy lookup.
> For a project I am currently working on I stumbled upon the following.
> What is the best way to lable and name equipment?
Choose a naming convention, publish it internally, and stick with it.
Well...that is the project 
Some folks like to put airport abbreviations in their labels to attempt to
indicate the geographic location of systems. I don't as there are cities
with multiple airports, national and international airport labels can
conflict, and I frequently find that facilities are actually in different
cities than the nearest airport.
Agree. Besides, if you things like repeter stations there is not even a
city. Just a location. Still, I am woundering what is the best path. To
write a rule-set or grammar for generating codes, or just creating a list.
I've got a naming convention somewhere I wrote a while ago if you're
interested in a starting point...
Absoulutly!
- kurtis -
Thanks to all ofyou that have replied both on the list and privatly.
However, most of the answers are around naming of routers and boxes. My
question was actully split into several parts :
1. Naming of boxes and interfaces (physically and in DNS, CNLS, etc)
2. Labeling of inhouse cabling
3. "Line id:s"
Most of the replies I got was concerning DNS and 1). I want to limit the
differences between the platforms, and I am naive enough to think that the
recent years of mergers of Telcos and ISP most have led to someone coming
to the same prolem and conclusion... If anyone have anymore ideas around
the other questions please mail me. I reaslise that this migh be more of a
question for DATACENTER than for NANOG.
Best regards,
- kurtis -