Cost-justifying automated IP address management

by Stan Schatt

December 15, 2000 —

Over the years I've seen lots of sophisticated spreadsheets that were designed to manage a network's IP addresses. On a day I refer to as the day the Earth stood still, a client proudly explained the intricacies of his model as I watched the hands of the clock above his head failing to move. An hour later a fire alarm saved me from further torture. Of course, my torture was nothing compared to the torture of maintaining such a spreadsheet.

Why don't more people automate IP address management with the Dynamic Host Control Protocol?

There are a number of reasons to automate your IP address management. The error rate for entering data is around 3 percent. Such errors produce illegal IP addresses and routing problems that require you to reconfigure the guilty machines. Duplicate IP addresses also cause havoc.

If you figure in the time spent manipulating spreadsheets or modifying the configuration files in DNS tables, as well as the time spent troubleshooting problems and reconfiguring PCs, a large network could require a full-time person just to keep track of IP addresses.

Perhaps the best way to justify the cost of an automated IP address management system is to use the fully burdened hourly rate for a network support person and multiply that number by the amount of time spent performing the following tasks. Check Point Software has published a white paper that estimates how much faster those tasks can be performed via automation. It claims savings in four areas:

Initially setting up IP addresses (2 minutes vs. 15 minutes)
Reconfiguring desktop IP addresses for moves, adds, or changes (1 minute vs. 15 minutes)
Configuring mobile laptop IP addresses for moves, adds, or changes (5 minutes vs. 10 minutes)
Resolving IP address troubleshooting issues (10 minutes vs. 2 hours)

Excellent automated IP address management systems are available from vendors such as Check Point Software, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel Networks, and Process Software. CheckPoint's product is particularly valuable if you plan to integrate it with the vendor's firewall or other products, while Process Software places the emphasis on tightly coupling IP addressing with a network's directory structure.

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