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Establishing policies and rules for utilizing the address space effectively and efficiently
We'll take a closer look at each of these areas from a historical perspective to understand the
value of IP management software in simplifying management of these areas.
1.3.1
Configuring network nodes and IP enabled devices with IP information
In order to communicate on an IP network, there continually more and more elements that
require IP Address to be assigned and managed to function properly in a environment –
routers, VoIP phones, mobile devices, medical devices etc. etc the list just keeps getting
bigger. A node or host requires an IP address so IP packets can be routed from and to
appropriate endpoints. In the early days of the Internet and IP, devices were given essentially
hard-coded IP addresses. Companies or institutions would make a request to an address
registry, such as the American Registry for Internet Numbers or ARIN, for an IP network
address. An IP network address is a block of contiguous IP addresses from which the
requesting institution could assign at will. Beyond having an IP address, IP nodes also needed
to know where to look up other nodes on the network. Believe it or not, this was actually
done by hard-coding a text file, hosts.txt, into each and every node. When the user of the
computer wanted to access another node, say Alcatel-Lucent.com, the computer would look
in the hosts.txt file for the IP address of Alcatel-Lucent.com.
The computer can't send an IP packet to a node name, so translating this name to an IP
address was critical to communicate the request over an IP network. A directory like
function was needed to provide a node name to IP address; this function evolved to what we
now know as the Domain Name System (DNS). The computer could then put its own address in
the source IP address field of the IP header, and populate the destination node's IP address in
the destination IP address field. With the growth in the number of IP devices, automated
methods such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) were invented and deployed to
automate the assignment of IP addresses to hosts. Additional parameters were piggybacked
along with the assigned IP address, such as what address to send name to address queries, and
many other "options." DHCP greatly simplified the configuration of IP hosts, especially as
laptops hit the scene and users were in need to addresses specific to their subnet, or point of
attachment.
Today these requirements still remain the same, but with the introduction of new IP based
technologies it becomes increasingly more challenging to operate manually with disjoint
solutions such as Microsoft etc.. That is why even after 13+ years of supporting IP Address
Management DNS, DHCP VitalQIP continues to provide a robust, flexible solution for mission
critical environments and has expanded to be able to provide not only the best in class most
robust solution but also the availability of a hardware appliance as an option to further
streamline processes. .
1.3.2
Monitoring IP address usage
In the early days, administrators would simply write down which user or computer had which
IP address. This was usually tracked on several pieces of paper or napkins though some
sophisticated users utilized spreadsheets. In order for IP routing to operate effectively, IP
routers had to know how to route IP packets to the appropriate destination. Routers had
VitalQIP Product Description
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