IPAM

Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) enable organizations to increase networking efficiencies, improve cloud application performance, centralize provisioning, simplify operations, and reduce costs. Please read my recent post for an overview of  SD-WAN. In this post, we'll discuss the importance of flexible, adaptable and "software-defined" IP address management (IPAM) to fully realize the benefits of SD-WAN and to improve your security posture in the face of multiple Internet breakout points. IPAM comprises foundational network services for your IP network, which typically encompasses private networks, cloud networks, remote access networks, Internet of Thing networks and the Internet. Key IPAM functions include managing IPv4 and IPv6 address space across this diverse network landscape and requires tracking assigned and available addresses, allocating address blocks, splitting and joining address blocks as well as moving and freeing up address blocks and subnets...

The concept of software-defined networking (SDN) can be traced back to common channel signaling (CCS) technology developed during the 1970's and 1980's for use in telecom networks. The CCS #7 protocol operates via a signaling network independent of the telephony traffic (e.g., bearer) network and provides call setup, routing, release and related functions. In an analogous fashion, SDN decouples the data or bearer plane from the control or signaling plane. As illustrated in Figure 1, the data plane comprises network routing hardware or virtualized network functions while the control plane includes software that “defines” or monitors, manages and reconfigures network routers to achieve optimal performance. Software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs), the WAN component of SDN, enable organizations to partially or entirely supplant private network services such as Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) in order to improve network performance, centralize provisioning, simplify oper...