Managing change

An Ask the Expert feature with Crypton Computers

Many companies are not taking advantage of automated IP address management technology despite a growing need to tackle the issue. Clive Norris, founder and technical director of Crypton Computers advises companies how to choose the right IP address management solution.

Background

With the increased growth in IPv6, VoIP phones and mobile PDA devices, IP address management (IPAM) is rapidly becoming the top priority for network managers. You may be surprised to learn that most large organisations in Europe today, are still using the humble spreadsheet to manage their subnet and IP address assignments.

If you're responsible for managing your company network, you'll know that spreadsheets are; not scalable beyond a few thousand IP addresses, prone to errors, putting vital IP data integrity at risk, and cannot be accessed remotely by multiple users at the same time. What you really need is an intelligent, easy-to-use IP address management platform that automates the IP address assignments, tracks the utilisation of IP space, and scales to large enterprise networks.

But why should you consider an IPAM solution for your organisation?

• Are you still using spreadsheets to manage you IP address assignments?
• Experiencing network downtime due to duplicate IP addressing errors?
• Need to manage multiple instances of IP address space?
• Just had a company merger or relocation?
• Is your network actively changing?
• Are you planning for migration from IPv4 to IPv6 yet?
• Do you want to know your address space utilisation?

If any of the above applies to your organisation, then you should be thinking seriously about deploying an enterprise IPAM solution to manage your IP infrastructure.

Key Considerations

A true enterprise IPAM solution must include the following high-level requirements:

• IP addressing planning tools to help you plan and document your IP addressing scheme
• Web-based GUI for remote access from any location
• Role-based user access lists for multiple administrators
• Manages both IPv4 and IPv6 addressing simultaneously
• Automated SNMP discovery for accurate inventory of all network devices
• Audit Trail to track changes for regulatory compliance
• Flexible and detailed custom management reporting

Optional features include, mapping of DHCP scopes, API's for custom development, automatic synchronisation with DNS & Bind servers and integration with other Network Management Systems, such as Tivoli or HP OpenView.

On the market today, there are three types of IP Address Management Solutions to consider:

• Open Source or Shareware
• Scalable Enterprise Software
• Appliance-based Hardware
• Each has their advantages and disadvantages, so it’s up to the IT or Network Manager to decide which solution is the best fit for their organisation.

Appliance-based Hardware Solution

If you are looking for a solution that bundles DNS & DHCP services with IPAM, then you might consider an Appliance-based product, but there several disadvantages to the Appliance- based solution:

• Higher initial CapEx cost for hardware
• Requires complex inter-departmental and managerial decision making
• Fork-lift upgrade for integration with existing DNS infrastructure
• Some appliances cannot scale to millions of IP addresses

Open Source or Shareware Solution

There are plenty of open source and shareware tools for use inr very small deployments, but they usually come with minimal support and ongoing feature development may be sporadic at best.

Enterprise Software Solution

For large-scale IPAM deployments in a mixed vendor environment, you need a scalable, multi-user, web-based software solution supported by an industry-standard SQL database.
The key advantages of a software solution are as follows:

• Existing DNS infrastructure does not need to be replaced
• Simple pricing model offers transparent budgeting
• Industry standard SQL database allows IP & DNS information to be easily distributed to currently deployed DNS & DHCP servers.

Conclusion

Despite the bewildering choice of IPAM solutions on the market today, we believe that software-only products will remain the preferred solution for enterprises, service providers and telecoms and government organisations that require a simple low-cost migration path away from their current inefficient spreadsheet solutions.

To find out how we can help you choose, contact us at: 
T: + 44 844 686 9009
E: sales@crypton.co.uk
www.crypton.co.uk

Clive Norris is the founder and Technical Director of Crypton Computers, the UK's leading developer of IP Address management software. He has more than 22 years of hands-on IP networking experience, having designed and implemented some of the largest ISP networks in Europe, including NTL (now Virgin Media) and Chello Broadband in Norway.