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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: IP allocation software
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 [email protected] [email protected]
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