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What's the story behind the names of Cloudflare's name servers? (2013)

29 points

by aragonite

3 days ago

| past

| 6 comments

| blog.cloudflare.com

| HN

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majke

36 minutes ago

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If you want to know more about the cache invalidation in the whole pipeline of DNS requests, take a look at this

https://blog.cloudflare.com/tld-glue-sticks-around-too-long/

I hinted there how the NS chain of lookups works from . to your domain. The point is that we wanted to be able to move name servers around the ip addresss, but that wouldn't work for many domains. So - in some contexts moving IP's rapidly is possible, in some it's not. Fun.

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thelastgallon

37 minutes ago

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There are 2 hard problems in computer science: naming things and cache invalidation. Cloudflare writes about how it deals with the first one.

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aa-jv

32 minutes ago

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3 hard things: you missed counting things.

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Stratoscope

20 minutes ago

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The classic version...

There are two hard problems in Computer Science: naming things, cache invalidation, and off by one errors.

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bantunes

1 hour ago

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"Naming strategies for servers" seems like a big enough niche for there to exist a compendium somewhere already, but I couldn't find a good one.

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hcaz

56 minutes ago

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I always refer to https://namingschemes.com/Main_Page

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vermilingua

15 minutes ago

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Fantastic, I have long used Culture Ship names [0] to name my devices but this is a far easier list to reference than others online

[0] https://namingschemes.com/Culture_Ships

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voidUpdate

50 minutes ago

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Could do with having Minecraft Blocks instead of just Minecraft Materials, that's what I use for my home network

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hcaz

57 minutes ago

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As always https://xkcd.com/910/

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Traubenfuchs

54 minutes ago

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Just make it a uuid or some other kind of random a-z0-9 string to avoid all this whimsy and nuisance?

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GuB-42

27 minutes ago

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These names are for humans to remember and to type-in, not just for computers. And whimsy names are more memorable, which is a good thing. Random strings are for computers, not humans.

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voidUpdate

51 minutes ago

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What's wrong with whimsy?

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Traubenfuchs

47 minutes ago

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It leads to friction and required follow up extra work, as explained in the article.

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voidUpdate

30 minutes ago

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Where does it say it leads to friction? Other than the little ninja drawings, but they asked for that

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fnoef

54 minutes ago

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This is so cringe. I feel like software engineers are just overgrown toddlers stuck in kindergarten: "We named our servers with boy and girls names and hired an artist to draw their personalities as ninjas!!@!111". I mean, whats wrong with a plain old 4 character hash or whatever?

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whstl

43 minutes ago

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As someone slightly older than average here, one of the perks of maturity for me is not caring much about what others think anymore. Childish or cringe are fine.

But I don’t judge: being a teenager or a young adult and rejecting such things is a rite of passage that we all go through.

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CodesInChaos

39 minutes ago

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> When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

― C.S. Lewis

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fnoef

32 minutes ago

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> When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

― 1 Corinthians 13:11

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xnickb

51 minutes ago

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What's wrong with this? They have resources and desire to make their work fun. What happened to wanting to enjoy what you're doing?

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fnoef

39 minutes ago

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The wrong in this, is the extent they went to with this. I mean, name your servers whatever you want, but hiring an artist to draw the servers personalities and then writing a blog post about this? Like common, that's something a child would do about their favorite toy. At some point, people need to grow up.

And I guess the other "wrong with it" is the fact that it just wastes human potential. Build robust software and take pride in this, not it naming your servers bob and lola.

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chuckadams

36 minutes ago

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I reject your joyless reality and substitute my own.

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onesandofgrain

45 minutes ago

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Maybe they should spend more time keeping their servers from crashing lol, and less on nameserver-namings

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voidUpdate