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Managing Lots of IP Addresses?
haggisbrain asks: "I'm a Systems Administrator and I've recently started work with a new company where I'm now helping to support a much larger number of nodes than I've previously supported. We have just over 1000 nodes to support, but no efficient method to manage the IP addresses and subnets used. Previously, an Excel Spreadsheet has been sufficient enough for my needs, but now I need to find a new way. Can someone recommend a piece of software which can help me? Is there a simple way to list and view the IP addresses used on my network?"
DHCP, FTW!!!!
A decent DHCP server can easily be configured not to hand out addresses to anything. It can be configured to only hand out an address (dynamic or static, take your pick) to only a specific MAC address (or addresses).
>And an alarm goes off whenever anyone as much as removes a single computer from the network.
That'd be quite a bit of overhead, what with pinging every single machine constantly to check it's state. No DHCP server I've seen would do that, but with the open source DHCP servers, it wouldn't be too tough to implement.
>Even the cables from the router to the wall sockets are manually connected and disconnected.
That's not at the layer DHCP operates at, so yeah, that's a problem only the switch it's connected to can handle.
>There are however, Wi-Fi areas for anyone who wishes to connect their laptops to the network, and users are free to use USB memory keys, CD/DVD burners and external drives.
Something else, obviously, DHCP is designed for.
Really, it's a great tool. I'd still recommend setting up DHCP to hand out addresses to machines that aren't listed in the MAC address database, but they should be handed out an address on a network that isn't reachable by anything but the DHCP server. Lets you know that the machine is connecting OK, and, if you have the machine configured to allow you to push software on to it (to lock it down / whatever) you'll still be able to do that.
And an alarm goes off whenever anyone as much as removes a single computer from the network.
So, if a computer crashes hard or is turned off, you get paged? That's got to be very annoying when the number of systems is greater than 100.
Even the cables from the router to the wall sockets are manually connected and disconnected.
I've never seen an automatic cat5 cable connecting/disconnecting machine. Where can I buy one?