For years I've used an MS Excel spreadsheet to manage my IPv4 addresses. IPv6 is going to be maddening to manage in a spreadsheet. What does everyone use for their IPv6 address prefix management and documentation? Are there open source tools/apps for this?
* aaron1@gvtc.com (Aaron Gould) [Thu 16 Nov 2023, 19:04 CET]:
For years I've used an MS Excel spreadsheet to manage my IPv4 addresses. IPv6 is going to be maddening to manage in a spreadsheet. What does everyone use for their IPv6 address prefix management and documentation? Are there open source tools/apps for this?
The first three hits for "open source ipam" on a search engine are:
- phpipam.net/
- spritelink.github.io/NIPAP/
- github.com/netbox-community/netbox
I'd pick the last option, or possibly Nautobot.
You may want to scroll through ipam · GitHub Topics · GitHub for more options.
-- Niels.
phpIPAM for the win. NIPAP is effective, if basic. I’ve heard of lots of people who like Netbox.
I second Netbox, which has detailed IPv4/6 IPAM plus many other features:
[
IP Address Management - NetBox Documentation
demo.netbox.dev
](IP Address Management - NetBox Documentation)
-mel
I use my own console/terminal based stuff.
Its composed of 2 main scripts called blgrep for searching
and bldiff to display differences between revision/files.
Backend is SVN to keep stuff in sync and allow multiple people
to work on data.
Works pretty well for small/medium DC/NOC. I guess it wont scale much tho.
We used to have Excel files for those too years ago and it was madness.
Spreadsheets are terrible for IPAM regardless of address length, but I am curious to know why you think IPv6 would be particularly worse than IPv4 in such a scenario?
Owen
One of the first things that comes to mind, is that if you were to breakout a /64 v6 subnet (a standard-issue subnet to a residential customer) in an Excel spreadsheet, the number of columns you would need is 14 digits long. You could breakout the equivalent of a /12 v4 in just one column. Understandably in the real world no one (in their right mind) would do this, this is just for comparison.
Regards,
Christopher H.
Christopher,
A residential customer would be getting their /56 from the providers pool via RA or DHCPv6. With a /32 aggregate, it can handle 1.6 million /56 delegations, which can cover a few regions. It all depends on the planning going into splitting up the aggregate.
A rule of thumb I go by in the datacenter is, a /48 per customer per site, and further splitting it into /64s per VLAN, all of which can be plugged into a spreadsheet formula to produce a valid complete subnet.
Either way, keeping track of IPAM via spreadsheet is a recipe for disaster. NetBox and Nautobot are my choices, and is worth deploying on a server or VPS, even for home labs.
Ryan
I will second this.
Netbox is very rich and we can do and manage multiple other things also in netbox.
Like I am managing my complete server infra details and my service connectivity details in netbox.
Kudos to the developer and the netbox community.
Regards,
Gaurav Kansal
I've also heard good things about Netbox.
TeemIP ain't too shabby either.
Netbox for the win! You can not only use it for IPAM but for circuit inventory, designs, cross connects, rack layouts and automate from there. It serves as a true source of truth. I think you will be pleased.
I used NIPAP about seven or eight years ago. It’s quite customizable and easy enough to code against but not the easiest to work with, overall. It has some quirks. I think I would have chosen Netbox had it been as mature as it is now.
Oliver
try racktables, it comes with additional features that you may opt not to use.
Netbox or PHPipam. Phpipam allows you to break down subnets easier IMHo.
Justin Wilson
j2sw@j2sw.com
I give +1 for phpipam
Christopher,
A residential customer would be getting their /56 from the providers pool via RA or DHCPv6. With a /32 aggregate, it can handle 1.6 million /56 delegations, which can cover a few regions. It all depends on the planning going into splitting up the aggregate.
Or, if the provider isn’t stingy a /48 from the providers /≤32 (providers can get as many /48s as they need to support whatever number of customers receiving them, at least in the ARIN region).
A rule of thumb I go by in the datacenter is, a /48 per customer per site, and further splitting it into /64s per VLAN, all of which can be plugged into a spreadsheet formula to produce a valid complete subnet.
Either way, keeping track of IPAM via spreadsheet is a recipe for disaster. NetBox and Nautobot are my choices, and is worth deploying on a server or VPS, even for home labs.
On this, we agree.
It’s just not what spreadsheets do.
Owen