Helpful Mnemonic Devices for Networking

When I was a new high school English teacher I sat through a class on grammar my department chair taught to her 7th graders explaining a preposition is a word that describes anywhere a mouse can go. I’ve never forgotten that.

A few years later I changed careers to IT and found some very helpful mnemonic devices and acronyms that helped me remember various aspects of networking.

Here are a few that I used over the years:

DORA – DHCP process of Discover, Offer, Request, Acknowledge

Please Do Not Throw Sausage Pizza Away – OSI model in order starting with layer 1: physical, data-link, network, transport, session, presentation, and application

All People Seem To Need Data Processing – OSI model in order going backwards starting at layer 7: application, presentation, session, transport, network, data-link, physical

Big Dogs Really Like Me – the order of K values in EIGRP: bandwidth, delay, reliability, load, MTU

Every Alley Cat Eats Watery Noodles In Doors – ordered list of syslog messages: emergency, alert, critical, error, warning, notification, informational, debugging

Routing Networks Is Indeed A Great New Learning Initiative – an ordered list of OSPFv3 LSA types: router, network, inter-area prefix, inter-area router, AS external, group membership LSA, Type-7 NSSA, link LSA, intra-area prefix

We Love Oranges As Oranges Mean Pure Refreshment – a technically incomplete but still helpful way to remember ordered BGP best path selection: weight, local preference, origin, AS-path, origin-type, MED, path, router-ID

 

Please feel free to add to this list in the comments – I’d love to learn more!

Thanks,

Phil