Software or PHP/PERL scripts for simple network management?

Tue Jun 19 21:51:18 UTC 2007

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, William Allen Simpson wrote:

> 
> Drew Weaver wrote:
> >         Does anyone have a recommendation of any software products
> > either commercial or freeware which will import the ip routing table
> > from one of my routers/switches and display it in a sorted manner? We
> > just need an easier distributed method than logging into our Black
> > Diamond and typing sh iproute sorted every time we need to find an
> > available subnet.
> > 
> Wow, LOL!
> 
> The software product is called a "text editor".
> 
> Look at your list of assignments in your NS .arpa. file:
>   1) Find a subnet that hasn't been assigned.
>   2) Update the text file.
>   3) Wait for it to propagate.
>   4) Tell the customer.
> 
> The concomitant procedure for static host assignment is:
>   1) Find a number that hasn't been assigned.
>   2) Update the text file.
>   3) Wait for it to propagate.
>   4) Then, and only then, update the forward NS file(s).
>   5) Tell the customer.
> 
> Of course, there is software that will automatically maintain the files,
> and even send a signal to bind, but I've alway found them to be weak at
> subnet management.  Text editor is the way to go -- using subversion for
> "distributed" file management (that is, knowing who to blame for
> mangling the assignment commit).
In words of Vijay, "It does not scale".
In words of Randy, "I encourage my competitors to do this".

Neither 'show ip route' or 'have a text file' scale beyond a hundred 
customers. 

Proper IP management is complicated. You want to have following things:

a) easy IP allocation

b) IP association with customer and specific service for following
purposes: 

* future IP justification with RIR's 

* abuse trackback

c) easy IP deallocation when customer leaves

d) minimizing additional fragmentation of blocks - for example, if you
need a /29 and you have a /29 and a /28 available - you want to take /29
before fragmenting /28.

e) support for 'special-purpose blocks' - ie, /30 for pt-pt and 
/32 for loopbacks are to be assigned from blocks that are not used for any 
other purpose.

f) (similar to above) regional/local allocations: "give me a /32 out of 
dallas loopback blocks"

g) two-way sync (or at least diff) of your databases to operational data 
(the configs in routers) - so you can see what it *should* be vs what it 
actually is.  Ideally, generate commands to update configs to the 
database.

I think everyone ends up writing their own systems to manage IP space as
part of general network management.  Unfortunately, they end up being very
specific to the network in question (for example, my stuff is very geared 
toward terminating a large number of vlans on a l3 switches, etc)...

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