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Thanks to NetID's back-end database, problems such as multiple users changing information in the system were less of an issue. If you are already running an Oracle database, NetID can share that database space.

The only downside with NetID was its installation, which was rough and clearly not a simple turnkey install. However, once we overcame the installation hurdles, NetID let us rest easy.

Quadritek Systems QIP
Quadritek Systems has created a powerful, feature-rich system in QIP, which has all the functionality one would expect from an enterprise product. However, its interface was a bit cluttered and was not as easy to use as NetID's and Shadow Server's. Overall, however, QIP is a sound way to store and manage IP addresses.

The NT version of QIP that we tested runs as a service. Although this in itself isn't a shortcoming, we were frustrated by the lack of information we could obtain. For example, though we were able to get some information from QIP's use of the NT Event Log, such as the starting and stopping of services, it was not as helpful as the information we'd normally see from a real-time log.

Real-time statistics aside, we really liked QIP's extensive reporting features, which include the ability to view reports by device, subnet and even administrator. If you deploy a fleet of machines that are configured exactly the same, you could track them a number of ways with QIP.

QIP was not without its d rawbacks. Its user interface is practically a nightmare on its own. Its main screen has rows of icons that are nearly identical, except for a few characters. But once we became familiar with the interface and learned where the majority of the little icons took us, we did discover quite a bit of power under the hood.

QIP handled our dynamic and static address pools with ease. It also performed the appropriate DNS updating and reporting. With a better interface and a few more data import and export options, QIP would have scored better.

Cisco Systems Cisco DNS/DHCP Manager
Cisco Systems' IP management product, Cisco DNS/DHCP Manager (CDDM), offers far more than what we expected, given its cost. With a starting price of only $6,000 for 5,000 nodes, Cisco has created a solid IP management solution for small-to-midsized locations. Unfortunately, CDDM does not offer some of the advanced features that more powerful, higher priced products offer.

With a strong GUI fro nt end on its server suite, Cisco provides a stable way of accessing IP data. Its server offers most of the core features found in the more expensive servers, but a few key features were absent. For example, we would have liked to have seen better import and export tools. Additionally, we also found its DNS and DDNS support lacking.

The majority of the features in Cisco's offering performed exactly as we expected. Setting up a pool of IP addresses and dynamically assigning them to our clients was a snap. But assigning characteristics to a number of hosts, such as netmask, was not as straightforward as we would like. Creating static addressing with DNS/DHCP Manager was also a bit uncomfortable--as was the case with all of the other systems tested.

Cisco's product also lacks support for multiple user levels. In our university environment, it is extremely helpful to grant users either read-only or partial read/write access to the database. With CDDM, you either have access or you don't--there's no tier ed management. In addition, CDDM did not let us launch additional simultaneous sessions; NetID Enterprise, QIP, Shadow Server/IPcentral and UName-It all allow this. In large organizations, the number of users who need to simultaneously edit address information is large, diverse and often physically scattered.

Cisco Systems isn't sitting still with this version of CDDM. While we were testing, we were given the chance to get a quick peek at version 1.1 of DNS/DHCP Manager, which was due out by press time. This release is supposed to offer support for DDNS updates, complete support for Windows NT, add support for Token-Ring and offer an enhanced user interface.