Software or PHP/PERL scripts for simple network management?

Wed Jun 20 00:02:05 UTC 2007

alex at pilosoft.com wrote:
> 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)...
>
>
> --
> Alex Pilosov    | DSL, Colocation, Hosting Services
> President       | alex at pilosoft.com    877-PILOSOFT x601
> Pilosoft, Inc.  | http://www.pilosoft.com
>   
Do Pilosoft supply such a product? All the ones I tried so far suck soo 
much that I could never use them.

Right now we manage address space with mysql and perl scripts...

--
Leigh