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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?"
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.
Hello 30 seconds on google:
http://iptrack.sourceforge.net/
When I worked for an ISP one of the tasks I had to deal with was, "Assign a /28 to customer X." That's a deceptively simple request.
/28 to customer X in network area A." That of course means that I first have to assign a superblock, say a /22 to network area A and install the /22 route at the borders of network area A. So now its, "Assign a /28 to customer X in network area A. Assign and route a new superblock to area A if necessary."
/28 but tomorrow it could be assign a /24. If I want to actually have a /24 tomorrow then I need to assign a /28 ideally from an available block in area A that's exactly a /28 long. If none are availale, I'd prefer to break a /27 (still in area A) rather than a /26 or a /25. So now its, "Assign a /28 from the smallest available block in network area A to customer X. Assign and route a new superblock to area A if necessary."
/28 I can grab. So now its, "Clean dead assignments from the list. Then assign a /28 from the smallest available block in network area A to customer X. Assign and route a new superblock to area A if necessary."
/28 from the smallest available block in network area A to customer X. Assign and route a new superblock to area A if necessary. Delegate the reverse DNS for those IP addresses to the customer."
/28 from network area A is like searching for a needle in a haystack. What I really need a system that:
/28 for me from area A for me, and
First, some of my routers had as little as 16 megs of ram. Route aggregation is essential. So its not just assign it to customer X, its "Assign a
Second, there is the question of conservation. Today its assign a
But, see, I've been doing this for years now and customers come and go. Quite a few of the blocks assigned in my list may be dead; no longer associated with active customers. I don't want to go breaking larger blocks if there's an assigned but dead
And lets not forget reverse-DNS. Ideally I want the customer to have some sort of control over it. So now its, "Clean dead assignments from the list. Then assign a
Needless to say, a spreadsheet is not very helpful for any of this. Finding that optimal
A. Processes the cancelled customer list so it knows which assigned blocks are dead,
B. Find's the optimal
C. Sets up an appropriate delegation so the customer will be able to manage the reverse-DNS for his IP addresses but no others.
And no, I never did find a good system to do this. I used a flat file that could be used to generate a graphic representation of the assigned addresses and tagged all blocks to customer ids so I could automatically check them against the accounting system. It was better than excel but it wasn't good.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
What an annoying comment....perhaps a troll.
Asking slashdot is informative for everyone. Sure, google may turn up a few thousand hits, but there may still be some gems hidden in there that slashdot can provide links to.
Maybe people will find a new version/product that they didn't know they wanted/needed.
"Hey Slashdot, I'm good at my job but I don't know everything.. please help me. I've already googled around for at least an hour to see what solutions exist. Being a social and intelligent human being who doesn't live in a vacuum, I'd love to have a conversation with other administrators about what solutions they have found valuable. I'm hoping that I can learn something those who have already investigated these solutions. I want to learn from your experience and leave a public record on Slashdot for other people who might have the same need in the future."
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