Hello all -

I am a researcher at Colgate University, working with colleagues at the University of Wisconsin and Boston University on studying aspects of the DNS.

We are wondering what insights anyone here may be willing to share about naming convention patterns that we’ve observed.  There are many FQDNs with (full or partial) embedded IPv4 addresses in A records, with many variations on padding, order, whether decimal or hex, etc.  There are also a number of providers that use some alphanumeric sequence (seemingly unrelated to IP address) embedded in names.  We assume that these names are generated either from a commercial IPAM system or some other set of management tools or scripts.  Some of our questions are:

• What kinds of knobs are available in commercial IPAM systems for crafting hostname patterns?
• What are some of the key use cases for having an A record (or AAAA for that matter) in which part or all of the address is embedded in the name?

Thanks so much for any thoughts you’re willing to share -- please feel free to respond off-list.

Regards,

Joel Sommers