To some folks, naming things like hosts or peripherals on the network is something done trivially. Should the printer be called printer or Epson (if that is indeed the make of your printer). This works when you only have one printer, but what do you name the second printer? printer2!?! Oh gawd, that would bother me. What happens if you get an HP printer to replace your Epson? should you rename the printer or keep the Epson name but point to the new HP printer? Loads of questions that I’m sure only bother folks like myself would crave a bit of order. I’ve implemented order at work and at home in various ways. In the early days of my career at the lab, my group had a “policy” to name hosts after mountains. Shasta, Krakatoa, etc were all used and volcanic mountains were used to specify a group within a group. This speaks to me like a beautiful painting or poetry speaks to other folks. You can do many things at once: a) provide order out of chaos, b) encode information, c) offer little bits of history or science.
I’ve settled on a naming scheme for my house. My router has been named heart for as long as I can remember. My NAS is named kidney. I’ve decided to name my printer colon. Why you say? Well, the belts inside it (it’s a Dell Color Laser 3130cn) are somewhat serpentine and it spits out stuff so I think that name is appropriate. My Cisco IP phone is named cochlea. Essentially my Linux PC should be brain. I’m a bit reserved on that word. I’m still thinking about what name I should choose for my Linux PC; any suggestions?
