Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you. How do you manage IP addresses? Typically pushed to the backburner, IP address management (IPAM) upgrades in enterprise IT departments might have gotten some attention last year, according to recent survey results. Tools cure IP address management headaches IP address management tools aren't sexy, but they can certainly take the tedium out of the necessary and difficult task of tracking IP addresses and DNS names across an enterprise network. How we tested IP address management tools The Proteus/Adonis, VitalQIP, and IPControl product have professional services included in their prices. We scheduled a time for a representative professional engineer to come to our lab and set up their product. Only one company was allowed at a time. With EasyIP, we set up a Windows Server 2003 machine with IIS and .Netv1.1 and then installed the EasyIP software. The next step was to populate the product’s database with the test data which we accomplished through the data import/export test. Managing IP addresses with free tools Few people would argue the importance of IP addresses to network operations, but many don't make managing them a priority in their environment, especially in tough economic times. IP address management projects not a priority for IT Corporate networks depend on IP to run smoothly, but that doesn't mean projects designed to streamline IP address management (IPAM) processes get top priority in most IT shops, survey results reveal. Justifying the payoff of IP address management IP address management (IPAM) is one of those areas that continues to grow in importance as TCP/IP becomes the de-facto standard for corporate networks. It's also an area that is just recently starting to see an appropriate level of automation. A new paper by Infoblox, available here, examines this need for automated management in detail. According to Greg Lanier, Infoblox director of marketing communications: "It's kind of mind blowing that most people are still doing this on spreadsheets. You shouldn't be managing some of your most critical network assets with Excel." Is the Internet Ready for a Pandemic? As the dreaded word "pandemic" tops this week's headlines about the swine flu virus spreading around the globe, many businesses are dusting off emergency plans for employees to work from home and schools are poised to send students home. If this turns out to be a full-fledged pandemic, not only will people fall ill, the Internet will too. More Regarding H-1B Visas In her Microsoft Subnet blog Kerrie Meyler continues her writing about H1-B visas. She cites several interesting articles on the topic. April giveaways galore Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30. Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news. |
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