Conventions

This documentation shows alot of examples. However, while setting up your own environment, the Internet IP addresses and domain names used in this documentation should NOT be used!

Domains Names

The public domain “example.net”

The public internet domain for services available to the world outside is always called example.net. This domain has been reserved for documentation purpose by IANAA and can not be used for your own services. See IANA-managed Reserved Domains.

Instead you should come up with your own domain name and register it yourself.

The private local domain “lan”

The private local domain for servces available on the local network is called lan. This is a non-existing top-level domain. As such it ensures, that any servies available on this domain, will never be reachable from the outside. You can use lan in your own environment or come up with your own, as long as it is not available on the internet. You can find a list of all currently available top-level domains on Wikipedia’s List of Internet top-level domains or directly in IANA’s Root Zone Database.

Also don’t use “local”” as your local domain, as this will create problems with mDNS, who uses “local”” already for service-discovery on local networks.

We use two categories of hostnames.

Machines Hostnames

Physical machines or devices have kind of a personality and should have an easy to remember name across îts entire lifespan.

It should be named the first time it is put in service. Don’t use your own name or the name of you userprofile as computer hostname. Don’t call it anyones name, person or animal, present in your household or organization. Easy to use is any list of uncommon words, like “cities in India”, “rivers in Canada”, “greek goods”, “planets in our starsystem”, “characters of Star-Trek” or any list of characters from your favourite TV series. Don’t use numbers (we habe IP addresses for that). Don’t use roles (they will change over its lifetime),

Physical machines are always local and private and therefore only resolve to names in the internal private domain “lan”.

Example	Your Hostname	Description
router		Internet-Gateway, Firewall and WiFi router device
server		Computer running Ubuntu Server
nas		NAS device (Network Attached Storage)
desktop		Personal computer device
tablet		Tablet computer running CyanogenMod Android
smartphone		Smartphone running CyanogenMod Android
reader		Reader device for electronic books
dlna		A/V streaming client device with DLNA support
phone		Telephony device with SIP client capabilities

Service Hostnames

Service hostnames on the other hand are a just the name of the services they provide. Services run on different physical devices and a device might run different services. They are just there, so you don’t have to remember the IP address of a service and not on which physical machine it is running.

There are private and public service hostnames, depending of the service they provide.

Private Local Hosts

DNS resolvers for example are a local service provided on your internal network only.

All private hostnames resolve to the its private IPv4 address and IPv6 address.

Hostname	Description
gw.lan	Internet-Gateway, Firewall and WiFi router device, LAN interface
ns1.lan	One of two recursive DNS resolvers
ns2.lan	One of two recursive DNS resolvers
sql.lan	Database server
admin.lan	Web-based administration interfaces
time.lan	Time server

Public Global Hosts

Webserver who host your website to the public need to be reachable globally.

All public hostnames resolve to the same single public (and dynamic) IPv4 address, but have their own IPv6 address.

Hostname	Description
gw.example.net	Internet-Gateway, Firewall and WiFi router, WAN Interface
vpn.example.net	VPN server
dns0.example.net	Domain name server, hidden master.
dns1.example.net	Secondary domain name server, slave, other location / network.
dns2.example.net	Secondary domain name server, slave, other location / network.
dns3.example.net	Secondary domain name server, slave, other location / network.
mail.example.net	Mail server
web.example.net	Web-Server
cloud.example.net	Cloud server
xmpp.example.net	XMPP instant messaging server.
sip.example.net	SIP VoIP server
books.example.net	Calibre books library server.
media.example.net	DLNA gateway
bt.example.net	BitTorrent Tracker
btc.example.net	BitCoin server

There can be more, but sometimes they are just aliases, running on the same IP address (like ).

IP Addresses

Public IPv4

Wherever the current public IPv4 address is needed, we use 198.51.100.240 as IP address. This is not a real address. It has been reserved for use in documentation. Your public IPv4 address is usually assigned to you by your ISP and might change periodically.

Local Private IPv4 Subnet

We use 192.0.2.0/24 as local private IPv4 subnet in this documentation. This is also is from a range of addresses that has been reserved for documentation and should never be used in real IP networks. Regardless if that network is private or not.

You can choose your private network address freely as long as it is in the range private network address space by RFC 1918. See Private Network on Wikipedia.

However I advise against using any of the very common 192.168.0.0/24 or similar subnets, which everyone uses or which are the default setting in many router devices. Chances are, that you end up being in a private subnet in a friends house or coffe-shop and can connect to you VPN at home, as both use the same subnet.

Don’t use any of the 10.0.0/8 blocks either, as they are very common to be used in routing by mobile and other telecom providers as well as many bigger organziations.

Use a random /24 block out of the 172.16.0.0/12 blocks and tell your friends to do the same (with another random block of their own). That way you will have little chances of being stuck between two private networks and can connect different households by VPN easily.

192.168.0.0/24	Avoid
192.168.1.0/24	Avoid
192.168.2.0/24	Avoid
192.168.100.0/24	Avoid
10.0.0/8	Avoid
172.16.0.0/24
…	Best
172.31.255.0/24

Here is Linux command-line to find a random /24 subnet in the 172.16.0.0/12 block:

$ echo 172.$((RANDOM%16+16)).$((RANDOM%255)).0/24

Use the following to find a random /24 subnet in the 192.168.0.0/20 block:

$ echo 192.168.$((RANDOM%255+4)).$((RANDOM%255)).0/24

Example	Your Subnet	Description
192.0.2.0/24		Local private IPv4 network (See RFC 1918).

Global Public IPv6 Subnet

We use 2001:db8:c0de::/64 as the local public IPv6 network in this documentation. As you might guess,this one too is not useable in real-life situations as it is reserved for documentation only.

You will get your IPv6 prefix directly from your Internet service provider or from a tunnel provider, like Hurrican Electric if your ISP doesn’t support IPv6. Either a ::/64 or a ::/48 prefix.

Example	Your Subnet	Description
2001:db8:c0de::/64		Public globally routed IPv6 network

Hosts

Name	Address	Comments
home.example.net	198.51.100.240	Single Dynamic Public Address
www.example.net	192.0.2.30	Web server
mail.lan	192.0.2.40
mail.example.net	2001:db8::40
sip.example.net	192.0.2.27
sip.example.net	2001:db8::27

192.0.2.33

2001:db8:1::33

192.0.2.34

2001:db8::34

2001:db8:2::41

2001:db8:f00d::41

2001:db8:idea::41

2001:db8:face::41

198.51.100.41

203.0.113.41

198.18.249.0.41