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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body bgcolor=white lang=EN-ZA link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Thanks for the input.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>We’re a national ISP, so cities in a country, (well known DCs and our own) and pops in buildings in funny locations<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Thanks again<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Saul<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #E1E1E1 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0cm 0cm 0cm'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span lang=EN-US style='color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-ZA'>From:</span></b><span lang=EN-US style='color:windowtext;mso-fareast-language:EN-ZA'> Mark Tinka [mailto:mark.tinka@seacom.mu] <br><b>Sent:</b> 20 February 2015 11:02 AM<br><b>To:</b> Saul; afnog@afnog.org<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [afnog] naming conventions<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;mso-fareast-language:EN-ZA'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><p class=MsoNormal>On 20/Feb/15 10:34, Saul wrote:<o:p></o:p></p></div><blockquote style='margin-top:5.0pt;margin-bottom:5.0pt'><p class=MsoNormal>Hi<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I was wondering: are there any best practise documents out there for naming conventions for routers, switches, cabinets etc?<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>I know every organisations requirements are different, it’s a tricky subject, but when growing to with equipment an multiple DCs in multiple geographic locations, things become rather interesting. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Would be happy to hear other peoples experiences that have gone through this.<o:p></o:p></p></blockquote><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-language:EN-ZA'><br>In my experience, your choice of naming convention will depend on what type of network you are.<br><br>If you are a global carrier (typically wholesale), it is a little easy. But if you are regional or local network that mainly deploys network in several places within a city, and between cities in the same country, this can get a lot trickier.<br><br>For global-centric networks that typically live in well-known data centres in each city, you can rely on using airport city codes to define the location, even though you may spread across multiple data centres within the same city.<br><br>For local-centric networks, you're better off developing your own method of tagging buildings you deploy kit into, as not all of them will be data centres. Many of them will end up being high-rise building where your kit is deployed in a dusty old basement with barely enough cooling. In such a case, you can develop your own naming convention that can be used within your CRM tool so that Engineering and non-Engineering staff know how to quickly locate PoP's, e.g., a network I used to work for a couple of years ago has vehicle license plates broken down by state, where the first letter in the license plate signifies the state in which the car was registered. Then, the name of the building (not necessarily a data centre) into which kit was deployed was given a meaningful abbreviation (which would also include numbers if necessary) down to a fixed number of characters. The final construct would be:<br> <br> building_abbrevation_license_plate_state_first_letter<br><br>So let's say your car was registered in Acme state, and the license plates from Acme state start with the letter "A" (AJN 1234S being the license plate, for example), and that you're deploying kit in a building called Boistrous which is codified as "bois", the final PoP name would become:<br><br> boista<br><br>So your device name for that location would become:<br><br> cr-01-boista.domain.name ==> as an example<br><br>I could get into a lot of detail for either scenario, but as a first stab, this is the general idea. In essence, for networks that deploy densely in a single country, codifying your own names for buildings (even for well-known data centres) scales better, since the majority of your network won't be in data centres.<br><br>Mark.<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></body></html>