Definition
IP Address Management, the discipline and tooling used to plan, allocate, assign, discover, reconcile, document, audit, and automate IP addresses and prefixes. Mature IPAM also links addresses to DNS, DHCP, devices, sites, owners, and workflows.
Allocate a new branch network without creating future debt
A useful IPAM workflow captures intent before deployment and keeps that intent connected to what DNS, DHCP, routing, cloud inventories, and discovery later observe.
Select a non-overlapping prefix from the correct parent block and routing context.
Record the network’s owner, purpose, environment, location, lifecycle state, and approval reference.
Define DHCP pools, exclusions, reservations, gateway addresses, reverse DNS, and other dependent services from the approved plan.
Reconcile leases, DNS data, routes, cloud resources, and discovery against the intended allocation, then reclaim the block when its lifecycle ends.
What this does not mean
- IPAM is simply a spreadsheet of subnets.
- A trustworthy source of truth records intent, ownership, lifecycle, relationships, and change history—not just prefixes and free-form notes.
- Discovery data should automatically replace planned data.
- Observation and intent answer different questions. Differences should create reviewable exceptions instead of silently overwriting approved state.
- An unused address is automatically available.
- An address may be reserved, assigned to an offline system, held for failover, or governed by policy even when discovery does not currently observe it.
A practical review order
- Confirm the parent block, prefix length, routing context, and overlap status before allocation.
- Require a clear owner, purpose, environment, and lifecycle state for the network.
- Separate planned allocation, administrative assignment, and observed utilization.
- Reconcile IPAM with DHCP leases, DNS records, routes, cloud inventories, and discovery without erasing intent.
- Make deprecation and reclamation explicit so stale addresses, DNS records, reservations, and access rules are removed together.