VitalQIP Product Description
Copyright © 2011 Alcatel-Lucent Technologies
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Lucent.com, hr.ion.Alcatel-Lucent.com, etc. to IP addresses or at least knew who else to ask
down its own delegation chain.
This historical context helps summarize how IP address and IP naming services evolved from
being so simple that purely manual tracking methods were perfectly suitable, to becoming
very, very complex. This complexity grew in terms of keeping track of the growing number of
IP devices, which increasingly moved around with the use of laptop computers; VoIP phones,
IP enabled routers, monitoring IP address utilization with the complexity of variable length
subnetting and configuring name to address lookups. The need for software to manage all of
this grew increasingly during this time and continues today. The basic concept of what IPAM,
DNS and DHCP has not changed over the years, but what has changed are the things that IT
organizations, Service Providers, Management Service Providers etc. need to start thinking
about for the future.
1.3.4
Auditing and Tracking changes in the IP Address Space
Over the years monitoring, tracking and auditing of IP Addresses has become more and more
critical as security becomes more challenging and policies such as Sarbanes and Oxley become
requirements that need to be tracked and cared for. The use of VitalQIP for managing the
overall IP Address Space is very powerful and along with it brings a tremendous amount of
data that can provide view in to who, how and when access to the network is occurring and
when. Historically, there was not as much concerns of rogue devices appearing on a network
or rogue users because the IP Address Space was not as limited and things like security “break-
ins” did not exist. Now, these elements are day to day concerns of managers and need to be
cared for properly.
VitalQIP provides the tools to be able to not only manage and Monitor this space but also audit
and track it‟s usage by providing insight in to who, what, when things are occurring through
reporting and auditing.
1.3.5
Establishing policies and rules for utilizing the address space effectively and
efficiency.
Over the years, VitalQIP has taken the initiative to establish value add capabilities in the
product to further automate process and provide efficiencies of scale more effective use of
the address space and by leveraging automation. This was accomplished through Address
Allocation functionality. Address Allocation is automated IP address space allocation and
subnet creation that is a part of VitalQIP. It helps administrators manage network partitioning
or allocation, and warns when available address space begins to run out. User settable
thresholds provide this warning. Users can then apply to APNIC/ARIN/RIPE for more address
space before they are completely depleted. Address Allocation organizes IP address into
several levels. Each level is dependent on the next level for IP address space. The lowest
level is a block, the intermediate level is a pool, and the highest level is the pool hierarchy.
Address Allocation Provides a high-level management interface that associates individual IP
addresses with the corresponding address space delegated by Address Allocator. The command
line interface, application programming interface, and a Web-based graphical user interface
