systems in a network w strange naming convention

Question

I inherited some systems recently. Let's call them tom.company.com and jerry.tom.company.com with IPs 129.150.160.118 and 129.150.160.120 respectively. This naming convention (allowing a name to be prepended to another name) in a network topology is wierd but since they exist I believe it's possible.

It is correct if I assume that since they have different IPs on the same subdomain, I can bring down tom.company.com without affecting jerry.tom.company.com ?

By bringing them down, I mean shutting down the server. The systems are BSD servers. I am only interested in the network topology portion.

Another way of asking my question would probably be, using BSD machines: If there exists server bar.company.com (not a DNS server, not a router) and we want to setup foo.bar.company.com, what has to be done? Can bar and foo.bar be in the same subnet?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You haven't mentioned the operating systems, anything about where these machines are getting DNS service, or what applications might be running on the machines so it's really hard to give you any advice.

The names assigned to the machines aren't really relevant to whether or not you can "bring one down". The naming convention may seem a little strange, but it's perfectly legal. You're thinking in a mindset that the "." in the name represents another DNS zone of authority, but it might not. A hostname of "foo.bar" in a given "company.com" DNS zone is perfectly legal.

Likewise, their IP addresses have nothing to do with their names, nor whether you're able to "bring down" one without affecting the other.

Really, only what service / application roles the machines are actually performing matters re: "bringing them down".