NorthStar Released

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Well, the freeipdb.org guys beat me to it but I am happy to announce
the release of the NorthStar IP Address Tracking System v1.0 at:

  http://www.brownkid.net/NorthStar/

NorthStar is a system to track IP allocations and assign
them to specific Devices, Owners, and Locations. NorthStar can
nest allocations as deep as you like and also has a user permissions
system to control additions, modifications, and deletions of data.

NorthStar is still under development and already has many additional
features waiting to be released after testing, however v1.0 is fully
functional and has been in use in a production environment for over 3
months now.

For more information please visit http://www.brownkid.net/NorthStar/
or email me at the address in my signature.

Please note that this software is written by me and does not
represent the views of my employer in any way.

- --
Hitesh Patel
hitesh@presys.com

2

It would be intersting to compare the three free tools I know of:

* FreeIPDB <http://www.freeipdb.org/>
* RoboBijal <http://www.robobijal.org/>
* NorthStar <http://www.brownkid.net/NorthStar/>

For my limited experience, I can say that FreeIPDB is quite rough, absolutely not usable out-of-the-box. Only for people willing to participate in the development, I would say.

Robo-Bijal is specialized in RIPE allocation and has nice features for people dealing with RIPE (sending updates, for instance).

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On Tuesday 13 November 2001, at 21 h 4,

It would be intersting to compare the three free tools I know of:

* FreeIPDB <http://www.freeipdb.org/>
* RoboBijal <http://www.robobijal.org/>
* NorthStar <http://www.brownkid.net/NorthStar/>

For my limited experience, I can say that FreeIPDB is quite rough,
absolutely not usable out-of-the-box. Only for people willing to
participate in the development, I would say.

Robo-Bijal is specialized in RIPE allocation and has nice features for
people dealing with RIPE (sending updates, for instance).

One of the initial requirements when designing NorthStar was a tool that
combined ease of use, a wide array of features, and extensibility in the same
package. I haven't been able to implement all the features I would like in
the 1.0 release yet, however, I'm working on making the entire system modular
and developing a framework for adding different plugins to facilitate
integration into Billing, Authentication (ie Framed-Route in RADIUS), Routing
Registries (RADB, etc..), and DNS systems.

This is obviously a lot of work, but with a plugin based architecture many of
the tasks can be handled by small community written plugins. NorthStar does
not at this point have features such as automatic netblock assignment and
IPv6 support, however, I believe that support for these items should not be
far away. At this point I would say that NorthStar is ready for use in a
typical ISP environment that has an IP Administrator with moderate experience
in building and maintaining IP networks. Some work on scalability and
additional functionality is required before NorthStar is ready for use in a
provider based (tier-1) environment.

That being said go grab the source, install it and tell me what you think. :slight_smile:

- --
Hitesh Patel
hitesh@presys.com

4

Robo-Bijal is specialized in RIPE allocation and has nice features for

people dealing with RIPE (sending updates, for instance).

An the Real-Bijal is (I am sure) very happy to hear she was replaced by a
robot :slight_smile:

Double :slight_smile: to those who know her :slight_smile:

Peter

5

Peter Galbavy wrote:

> Robo-Bijal is specialized in RIPE allocation and has nice features for
people dealing with RIPE (sending updates, for instance).

An the Real-Bijal is (I am sure) very happy to hear she was replaced by a
robot :slight_smile:

Double :slight_smile: to those who know her :slight_smile:

Robo-Bijal still trails Real-Bijal in functionality - it might need some
work before you can trust it to configure your routers and that sort of
thing?

And I'm sure the real one is better company :slight_smile:

Giles