2003 • February • 20

Stop using numbers in your IP addresses.

By the way, Namber DNS at mysteryrobot.com (found via DiaWebLog) is damn nifty. As I understand it, it works from a set of 256 very short and simple words. Assemble four of these, and you can represent any IP address. Seems like this would make for very easily remembered IP addresses, as well as fairly simple to recite over the phone. For example: decafbad.com is sing.far.dry.today.mysteryrobot.com

shortname=ooodae

Archived Comments

Dave

2003-02-20T14:49:02

I can understand how this could be useful for long ugly domain names, but I find it much easier to remember and recite "decafbad dot com" rather than "sing dot far dot dry dot today dot mysteryrobot dot com." What other advantages am I missing?
Phillip Winn

2003-02-21T16:24:51

This doesn't work for name-based virtual IPs, however. My website is http://dry.cake.cool.home.mysteryrobot.com/ but that takes you to my ISP's control panel. You have to use http://w6daily.winn.com/ to get to my site. And Dave, the real comparison should be between 'decafbad' and 'sing, far, dry, today'. It's debatable, and would only be truly useful it the mapping was done locally, because then it would still work if DNS was unavailable. Of course, moving to a different ISP would meaning changing your "name" then, too, so it's not a perfect solution by any means. 8^)
Matt Brubeck

2003-02-24T19:42:53

I recently made a comparison of three similar mnemonic codes for IP addresses. This is the first live implementation I've seen, though.
Chris

2003-03-06T01:55:27

I don't get it. How am I supposed to remember the order of the words? Those little words are way too similar to differentiate in a four word phrase devoid of all meaning. I'd just as soon remember four numbers, then at least then I could find patterns in the numbers to help remind me.