IPAM

The potaroo website publishes a report, generated daily, regarding the availability and predicted exhaustion of IPv4 space. The report contains several graphs highlighting the history of address allocations, allocation rates over time, projected allocations and projected address exhaustion dates. These graphs are reported from the perspective of IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) and the RIRs (Regional Internet Registries). IANA serves essentially as the top of the IP food chain in allocating to RIRs from its pool of address space. Each of the RIRs then in turn allocates from its respective address space to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and in some cases, legacy address space holders who've historically obtained address space directly from Network Information Centers (NICs) which preceeded RIRs. This is why the report indicates IANA running out of space first, followed within about a year of the RIRs running out. When IANA allocates its last block, an RIR will have re...

The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel Governing Board has officially approved the Internet Protocol (IP) as its standard protocol for applications! While standardizing on anything but IP would certainly not have been smart, the obvious needed to be firmly stated. The Internet Protocols for the Smart Grid document referenced in the approval is an Internet draft, but it will likely gain IETF approval as an RFC in the near future. The draft is intended to provide Smart Grid designers with the core set of protocols on which to develop products and services and it covers UDP and TCP at the transport layer and IPv4 and IPv6 at the network layer, though it includes broad coverage of related protocols such as routing protocols, DNS, DHCP and network management protocols. While some in the industry had advocated stronger wording around recommending the use of IPv6 over IPv4, given the relative scarcity of available public IPv4 address space, the document is non-judgmental on this point. And ...

I was about to launch into my first post but I thought it more appropriate that my first post comprise a "hello world" introduction. My purpose in blogging is simply to document news and opinions related to the field of Internet Protocol Address Management (IPAM), particularly around IPv4 and IPv6, as well as the closely related technologies of dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP automates IPv4 and IPv6 address assignment) and the domain name system (DNS translates web/email/etc. addresses into IPv4 and IPv6 addresses). The practice of IPAM encompasses managing these core functions of IP address space, DHCP and DNS with the rigor of network management discipline. Such discipline is necessary given that these core functions serve as the very underpinnings of any IP network. Wthout DHCP automatically assigning IP addresses in accordance with the IP address plan, laptops, IP phones, PDAs, and other IP devices will be unable to communicate. End users may consider the ...