Back in early '98 there was a rather limited discussion on the availability (or lack) of software to manage IP allocations in a CIDR world. The concensus at the time was that nothing really existed, other than homebuilt products. Has anyone come out with a commerical or non-commercial solution since then? Jeremiah Kristal Qwest Internet Solutions Manager, Network Services 201-319-5764 x284 internal
Jeremiah Kristal wrote:
Back in early '98 there was a rather limited discussion on the availability (or lack) of software to manage IP allocations in a CIDR world. The concensus at the time was that nothing really existed, other than homebuilt products. Has anyone come out with a commerical or non-commercial solution since then?
While working for a small ISP I thought about writing such software myself. While analyzing what I might do with it, I realized I needed to interface it to the customer database rather than have it run standalone. Since that database hadn't been written/bought I didn't have any real direction to proceed with. Some of the specifications I came up with included the aility to have customer service people request assignments and get numbers back quickly, and have a restricted access pool assignment feature. Assignments needed to be associated with the customer from then on so that the information was obtained any time customer support or network operations needed it. It also had to be indexed in such a way that a search on any address in the block would yield the assignment and the customer. Interfaces might also be needed for generating reports and automated network update scripts. Basically I determined it really needed to be an integral part of the customer database system. The cost of such a thing should include the costs of entering and managing the data. Having customer reps or sales reps entering the customer data is already done with the customer database, so by integrating the IP address allocation, you skip the step of someone in network engineering having to re-enter the data. You skip the process delays of the work order going to network engineering and having to wait and come back before customer setup transmittal takes place. From a business cost perspective, it seems to me that the big cost savings is in the integrated allocation feature. Do you have any specs on such a thing? -- Phil Howard KA9WGN phil@intur.net phil@ipal.net
On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Phil Howard wrote:
Jeremiah Kristal wrote:
Back in early '98 there was a rather limited discussion on the availability (or lack) of software to manage IP allocations in a CIDR
Some of the specifications I came up with included the aility to have customer service people request assignments and get numbers back quickly, and have a restricted access pool assignment feature. Assignments needed to
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/software/
Do you have any specs on such a thing?
The above is a proven perl implementation of a whois query database, with (limited) access controls, database updates with various protections (by default its plain password, but you can put pgp into it) etc etc. Some of the features you request are not present, such as limited access pool assignment feature, but this could be implemented via the simple activity of modifying the code. (look at the hierarchial authorisation methods and so forth) Not to be left out, theres also rwhois (http://www.rwhois.net) which, IMHO, lacks certain features but is still usable. However I should point out that I have a certain biasis towards the RIPE db software (since I use it every day) --==-- Bruce.
Jeremiah: Accugraph and QIP will assign subnets and single IPs. -Douglas Ring Jeremiah Kristal wrote:
Back in early '98 there was a rather limited discussion on the availability (or lack) of software to manage IP allocations in a CIDR world. The concensus at the time was that nothing really existed, other than homebuilt products. Has anyone come out with a commerical or non-commercial solution since then?
Jeremiah Kristal Qwest Internet Solutions Manager, Network Services 201-319-5764 x284 internal
I've been working on OSIA (Open Source IP Administration) for the past few months. Unfortunately I've been extremely busy with my real job and lost part of the code in a system crash. I'm re-doing the code that was lost (mainly the SWIP template generation for assignments greater than /27) and I hope to have the code available to the public soon. It's written entirely in PERL, and is designed as a CGI frontend with an SQL backend sometime soon. Right now I'd consider it in the early alpha stages. It's been over a month since I made my original announcement to inet-access about OSIA. Now that things are slowing down here at work I should have public code available soon. It will assign ineternal hosts or networks for PTP connections, web vhosts, dialup pools, etc. and external hosts or networks, mainly customer networks. It will auto-genera SWIP's for you, and is totally portable. -- Joseph W. Shaw - jshaw@insync.net Freelance Computer Security Consultant and Perl Programmer Free UNIX advocate - "I hack, therefore I am." On Tue, 31 Aug 1999, Douglas S. Ring wrote:
Jeremiah:
Accugraph and QIP will assign subnets and single IPs.
-Douglas Ring
Jeremiah Kristal wrote:
Back in early '98 there was a rather limited discussion on the availability (or lack) of software to manage IP allocations in a CIDR world. The concensus at the time was that nothing really existed, other than homebuilt products. Has anyone come out with a commerical or non-commercial solution since then?
Jeremiah Kristal Qwest Internet Solutions Manager, Network Services 201-319-5764 x284 internal
participants (5)
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Bruce Campbell -
Douglas S. Ring -
Jeremiah Kristal -
Joe Shaw -
Phil Howard