Upgraded BlueCat IP address management appliance could ease IPv6 adoption

BlueCat Networks will announce on Thursday a new version of its IP address management appliance with enhancements designed to reduce the time it takes to manage IP address space. That's an issue growing in importance as network operators adopt IPv6, an upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol.

New features in Proteus 3.0 include an enhanced user interface, built-in monitoring of Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) services, and a data validation capability for automatically checking DNS and DHCP configurations.

"One of our goals as an organization is for our customers to spend as little time as possible on our products through integration with other products or through streamlining the interface and tools," says Branko Miskov, director of product management with BlueCat. "We've redesigned the flow and architecture and layout of the interface to make it much easier for users to access data. If we shave 10 or 15 seconds off an action item, we're talking about hours each year in time savings for administrators."

BlueCat also added to Proteus 3.0 support for NSEC3, an algorithm that is being used in the deployment of DNS security mechanisms by leading-edge domains such as .org.

For enterprise customers, the key feature in the latest version of Proteus is that network administrators can use it to manage multiple versions of BlueCat's Adonis software rather than having to upgrade them all to the latest version. Adonis appliances handle DNS and DHCP services and can be managed through the Proteus interface.

The price of Proteus appliances remains the same despite the additional features. A typical network installation including one Proteus appliance and two Adonis appliances costs around $50,000.

BlueCat's Proteus and Adonis appliances have supported IPv6 since 2007. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses, while the current protocol IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses. With IPv6, the issue of maintaining an up-to-date and accurate repository of IP addresses within an organization through an appliance like Proteus will become more critical, experts say.

Bron: Network World