9.1 When to Become a Parent

Far be it from us to tell you when you should become a parent, but we will be so bold as to offer you some guidelines. You may find some compelling reason to implement subdomains that isn't on our list, but here are some of the most common reasons:

• A need to delegate or distribute management of your domain to a number of organizations

• The large size of your domain—dividing it would make it easier to manage and reduce the load on your authoritative name servers

• A need to distinguish hosts' organizational affiliation by including them in particular subdomains

Once you've decided to have children, the next question to ask yourself is, naturally, how many children to have.