I have a domain, let’s call it “networking.tld” (not really). It was obtained for my first business venture.

I first purchased it when I was 22 years old, starting a technical consulting and support company with a really good friend of mine, Chris. Another good friend, Steve, was our ‘acting’ business manager. I remember us all going to Round Table Pizza for a meeting one day. We were to discuss what the company name should be. I remember suggesting “Green Light Networking” which I thought was cool and clever because green blinking lights are synonymous with network links being ‘up’. Chris and Steve didn’t like it, though. They suggested something more formal, such as “Networking Solutions” (not really). I reluctantly bowed to their suggestion given I wanted to impress clients as well with our professionalism (ha!).

With the company name out of the way, we started thinking of a catchy slogan. We started joking around after a few minutes of throwing ideas around. “Networking Solutions – because we live in the information age… or something.” was the one slogan I remember from that day, 19 years later.

Soon after we started out Chris unfortunately bowed out of the operation. In the short amount of time we worked together though, I learned how to be more confident in selling myself and my business to clients. I’ll always appreciate him for demonstrating that with our first prospective, where we were to redesign a Microsoft database (which neither one of us at the time had any idea how to do).

So now that I’m finally winding this business down 19 years later and focusing on my new startup, I’m noticing that the domain we purchased so long ago is deeply embedded into all of my infra. I can’t just “change it out” to be tidy and current. I understand more and more each day how legacy names of systems, services, etc. of *any* operation stick around for years, if not decades, simply because it’s not worth playing janitor if it works. Besides, it’s given me a chance to re-imagine the meaning of the domain name for the future.

But more than that, there’s a certain nostalgia and lineage for I.T. / systems / network administrator / engineer / dev / ops types in the naming of their systems that tells a story; and those stories and how they all play out are some of the most remembered and cherished parts of any business.

Or something.

Tagged with: business | hostnames | legacy | lineage | networking

Categorised as: Business | Technical