DNS on Windows Server 2003, 3rd Edition

What to Name Your Children

Once you’ve decided how many subdomains you’d like to create and what they correspond to, you must choose names for them. Rather than unilaterally deciding on your subdomains’ names, it’s considered polite to involve your future subdomain administrators and their constituencies in the decision. In fact, you can leave the decision entirely to them if you like.

This can lead to problems, though. It’s preferable to use a relatively consistent naming scheme across your subdomains. This practice makes it easier for users in one subdomain, or outside your domain entirely, to guess or remember your subdomain names and to figure out in which domain a particular host or user lives.

Leaving the decision to the locals can result in naming chaos. Some will want to use geographical names; others will insist on organizational names. Some will want to abbreviate; others will want to use full names.

Therefore, it’s often best to establish a naming convention before choosing subdomain names. Here are some suggestions from our experience:

• In a dynamic company, the names of organizations can change frequently. Naming subdomains organizationally in a climate like this can be disastrous. One month the Relatively Advanced Technology group seems stable enough, the next month they’ve been merged into the Questionable Computer Systems organization, and the following quarter they’re all sold to a German conglomerate. Meanwhile, you’re stuck with well-known hosts in a subdomain ...