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?"

Comments

Look@Lan

[bdr529]

Look@Lan It's a great little tool once you have it configured. It even will produce those nifty excel files for you if you wish. But man... I HATE that sonar sound effect. It's worse than the "UH OH!" sound made infamous by ICQ.

nmap & dhcp?

[khasim]

First off, just looking at your router configs should tell you what addresses are where.

Then, make sure you're using dhcp to assign the addresses.

Use nmap to check for weirdness.

IPplan

[yawble]

Hello 30 seconds on google:

http://iptrack.sourceforge.net/

Re:IPplan

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used IPplan in several instances to manage many thousands of addresses. Works well, will generate swips, DNS and DHCP config files, as well as running on most any platform.

Re:If only...

[mikael]

What's wrong with DHCP and dynamically updated DNS?

You don't want users connecting their own systems onto the network whenever they feel like it. All PC's in our university have static IP's. And an alarm goes off whenever anyone as much as removes a single computer from the network. Even the cables from the router to the wall sockets are manually connected and disconnected. 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.
Tech-support still have painful memories of when someone tried and failed to smuggle a PC out through the small bathroom windows in the block.

Managing IPs / DNS

[bernywork]

This question has come up once or twice before.

The usual suspects for answers to this question are as follows:

NorthStar, which is quite feature rich. "NorthStar is a system to help track and allocate blocks in an IP Network"

IPplan which is another open source product.

And PHPip

If you want to go commercial VitalQIP Enterprise could suit your needs quite well.

Berny

Network management

[Colin Smith]

Is there a simple way to list and view the IP addresses used on my network?" man fping. Though with 1000 nodes I'd be heading up to a network management system, something with autodiscovery. jffnms, opennms, zenoss or similar.

Ubersmith Datacetner Edition

[casualsax3]

My company has been using Ubersmith Datacenter Edition (Uber DE, for those in the know) for a few months now - the IP management stuff they've integrated into the device manager is pretty slick to say the least. We've done the spreadsheet before, as well as North*, but neither of those options mesh well with any external systems. If you've got hardware/network stuff to manage as well (which I assume you do) give the Ubersmith guys a call. I don't think there's an online demo of DE yet (lame) but when we were interested in the system we called up and one of the developers gave us a walkthrough of a live build, explaining what was going on. http://www.ubersmith.com/

Previous Ask Slashdot discussion

[josath]

Maybe you can find some useful info here, this topic came up about a year ago:
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/26/22 51224

Re:DHCP, FTW!!!!

[B'Trey]

DHCP is, in fact, irrelevant for this scenario as I understand it. He isn't assigning IPs to machines, which is what DHCP does. He's assigning blocks of IPs to other people for use as they see fit. The host using the IP might be sitting on the other side of two or three routers over which he has no control. It might not be assigned to a host or even a server. It might be assigned to a router interface. It might be assigned to a switches management VLAN. It might be one of a pool of IPs used in NATting a large number of hosts. Etc, etc, etc. The precise assignment of the IP is almost certainly not his responsibility and trying to track all of that additional info makes the job much harder, not easier. (Not to mention stepping on the toes of whomever he's assigning the IPs to. I know I'd be quite irritated if I had to go through my ISP to change where I"m using one of the IPs in my /30 block.) Anyone who suggests DHCP as an answer to this issue is either seriously misunderstanding the issue or has only cursory knowledge of the subject.