[97526] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Software or PHP/PERL scripts for simple network management?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Leigh Porter)
Tue Jun 19 19:53:53 2007
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:52:54 +0100
From: Leigh Porter <leigh.porter@ukbroadband.com>
To: William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson@gmail.com>
Cc: "'nanog@merit.edu'" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <467805D3.8090101@gmail.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
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).
However Drew suffers because some idiots in his org fail to update the
files correctly. I used to have the same problem when I took over ops at
a small ISP. They were using the routing table to store assigned subnets
trick. It was OK until a link died so a subnet dropped out of the
routing table. They thought "Oh look spare space" and assigned it to
somebody else.....
There are also a load of decent (not good) free IP address management
systems available, some with built in DNS updaters.
I do not use these because they all drove me mad. Now I just have
somebody else do it for me. It's worth it ;-)
--
Leigh
