[ppml] IP Address Management Tools

[Eric Van Tol]

Hello all,
Changing my status from a lurker to a participant on this list, I would
like to inject that we developed such a system in-house which manages
all aspects of IP address management, as well.  This system handles
provisioning/deprovisioning of IP networks for customers and internal
usage, reports usage by type of service, provides utilization statistics
per service/subnet/customer, handles automatic updating of SWIP, network
architecture information (ASNs, VLAN IDs, assigned routers, etc.), and
many other aspects of IP management.

The system was built almost entirely based upon the ARIN requirements
for requesting new IP address space.  As the ARIN requirements became
somewhat clearer, the means by which to gather and store the data became
much harder to deal with.  A team of three very talented in-house
programmers designed the system for us and it took them about a month or
so to complete.

Eric Van Tol
Sr. Network Engineer
Atlantech Online, Inc.
http://www.atlantech.net
301.589.3060 voice
301.589.3936 fax 

NOC ===> http://noc.atlantech.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Zeibari, Gregory [mailto:Gregory_Zeibari at cable.comcast.com] 
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 2:26 PM
To: 'Michael.Dillon at radianz.com'; ppml at arin.net
Subject: RE: [ppml] IP Address Management Tools


just an FYI...

We have been working with a Company named Diamond IP Technologies, to
develop such a tool to help us manage all of our private and public IP
space, called NetControl.

Please contact Michael Dooley directly at mdooley at diamondip.com,
610-423-4770 for more information.

Thanks.
Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael.Dillon at radianz.com [mailto:Michael.Dillon at radianz.com]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 10:27 AM
To: ppml at arin.net
Subject: [ppml] IP Address Management Tools


A few weeks ago, John Lewis said:

>It doesn't help that there seems to be no suitable tool for tracking IP

>utilization to the degree that ARIN applications require...at least
none 
>that I've seen, and I've installed and tested several of the free 
>ones...and never got anywhere trying to get info or a test drive out of
a 

>commercial one.  This means for the average ISP, ARIN application time
is 

>also IP utilization audit time.  Not a fun time for whoever does it.

>If someone were to develop an affordable (to the average small ISP)
tool 
>for IP allocation tracking, and applying for more space was reduced to 
>filling out a few text fields on the ARIN application and including a 
>report from your allocation tracking system, I think there'd be alot
less 

>complaining about the 3-month's supply policy by ISPs when they get to 
>their 3rd allocation and finally get slapped down by the 3-month
policy.

I suggest that ARIN should provide such a tool in furtherance of its 
purposes such as numbers 4, 5 and 8. You can read the full text of those

numbered purposes at this URL: 
http://www.arin.net/library/corp_docs/amend_june_19_1997.pdf

I would like to see a discussion of this on the agenda at the next
members 
meeting.

I envisage this tool as something which uses a proper hierarchical data 
model for IP addresse, not a relational data model, and which uses an 
appropriate programming language which could be incorporated into 
commercial software packages or adopted by enterprise IT departments.
That 
probably means a Java framework combined with Python for scripting glue.

http://www.jython.org

Some things which are definitely not appropriate are MySQL and PERL.
There 
are already several hack jobs that people have thrown together using
PERL 
and MySQL but they don't do the job well enough, would never be adopted
by 
enterprise IT departments or commercial network management packages. In 
addition, MySQL is a RELATIONAL database but IP address ranges are 
hierarchical in nature and are better suited to an object-oriented or a 
hierarchical database model. The intention is not to do another hack job

but to provide a reference implementation that other people will adopt
and 
integrate into their larger systems.

-------------------------------------------------------
Michael Dillon
Capacity Planning, Prescot St., London, UK
Mobile: +44 7900 823 672    Internet: michael.dillon at radianz.com
Phone: +44 20 7650 9493    Fax: +44 20 7650 9030