Also, the english Wikipedia does not contain any articles about FullyQualifiedServerName, although the german one does. However, there is only one (older, from 1990) RFC which uses / contains any reference to the term FullyQualifiedServerName…
Note:
Although the RFCs do specify the closing dot in the FQDN as mandatory, it is also often taken as “given”, especially in the numerous GUIs or WebGUIs to install a server or “host” - or to set DNS at a lot of DNS hosters / providers (Not all! Some do demand the dot!).
With the dot at the end, a FQDN is really a FQDN and is 100% absolute.
Without the dot it could be ambigous, but a lot of GUIs / WebGUIs will NOT allow the dot to be entered.
To add some color to the constructive exchange between @michelandre and @Andy_Wismer, in American English,the terminology that network geeks would typically use would be to call a Nethserver instance a host. And, while it probably happened and I just never noticed it, I have no recollection of ever seeing the term, Fully-qualified Server Name, while FQDN in the context of referring to a specific host, such as a Nethserver instance, is very common.
There is another subtle point related to levels of abstraction that people from the network administration side use, which is that they will look at hosts on a network map, and not think much about the functions operating on that host, and not concern themselves with whether that host is a server, a middle box appliance such as a firewall or load balancer, or whether it is physical or virtual. And while it is true that Nethserver instances can act as a compute server, a minimalist installation function would legitimately be called a router.
While there are users here who ONLY use NethServer as a router / firewall, I don’t. I use a seperate box (OPNsense) as almost all my clients prefer having a seperate box. I suppose Swiss mentality!
And as my NethServers are all virtualized - and only have one NIC (without any vLANs!) - the term router would NOT be correct. To act as a router, at least 2 NIC Interfaces must be available, no matter if real or virtual or vLAN…
Host and FQDN are correct terms, in all forms of english. Fully-qualified Server Name is NOT, and only appears in one single RFC. I’ll also admit to seeing that term for the first time in Michel-André’s post and had to read up on that…
But a router is a bit off the mark. Not even my IT colleagues use NethServer as a firewall / router - simply because the DNS functions are rather meagre in NethServer. No CNAMES, or any other entries besides A records, CNAMES are only possible for the NethServer itself. And just adding “A” records instead of CNAMES will give you ambigous, usually wrong PTR results, so not really usable…
The above are not really “network administration” side use, maybe it is the case for undereducated people like MSCEs, who usuaally don’t know how to setup a PTR…
These are minimalist examples of what I call a network plan, and what I use for my clients:
Using concepts like “speaking names” each hostname will more or less give you an idea what that host is for (NethServer being a generalist, good for anything).
The top example is a doctors place, you can even “see” the X-Ray machine…
Networking can be done on several levels…
Lowly ones use domains like .lan or .local - typical of idiots who blindly followed stupid MS suggestions (from people who don’t even understand what DNS redundancy means…)
If you don’t recall, just before 2000, MS people made a typo on their main router - and Microsoft went completly offline for 2-4 days… 4 DNS Servers, in a Network Operating Center with 4 seperate Internet Connections - and putting all 4 DNS Servers in the same subnet behind the same router / firewall…
From then on, Steve ordered that someone else do their DNS (Akamai)…
I mean, it’s not that Microsoft had budget issues and couldn’t pay for redundancy. They did, but making such grave Blunders that zero redundancy resulted…
In 30 years, I’ve always used correct DNS - even for windows domains. I’ve NEVER set up a server with .lan or .local as a domain - and I never will! Using .local or such is just outing that you do NOT understand DNS, and need to act as a parrot for other people who also do not understand it, like MS…
Nowadays, even MS suggests to use a correct subdomain for AD, and not .local or .lan…
A client of mine is still running Netware 6 and 6.5 - only for legacy reasons, for as financial booking archive…
But NDS quickly became eDir (eDirectory), although the term is still all over the place inside Novells Apps / Tools… I think it was called NDS during the time of Netware 5 / 5.1…
BTW, as to nonexisting terms:
I recall a marketing company advertising some ERP systems…
There was a “Mircosoft Dymamics” - and 8 people never saw the 2 typos, until I informed them…
This is getting off the track, so we can continue in another thread. In my case, I’m not really a software geek anymore, but I did write a bunch of software long ago. I was the vp of sales/bizdev/service for the first company Cisco acquired that got Cisco into LAN switching, which was founded by two Italian engineers. About 15 years ago I led a company that built at the time the world’s largest 10GE data center switch. But Nethserver is only used for one home, and only two real users. I don’t host a website,I have a real simple network, and I appreciate the add-on fail2ban and Threat shield, so using Nethserver as a firewall works fine for my needs.
