What is IPAM, and why doesn't a spreadsheet cut it?
What IP address management (IPAM) is, why spreadsheets fail, what a good IPAM does — live scan and DHCP data, unknown-IP detection — and how to migrate from a spreadsheet.
IP conflicts are among the most irritating network problems: a printer that works sometimes, a server unreachable after a reboot, a camera that grabbed the gateway's address. The root cause is usually the same — nobody knows exactly which IPs are free. IPAM exists to fix that.
What is IPAM?
IP Address Management means planning, allocating and tracking IP addresses. An IPAM system knows your subnets, how full each one is, who owns each IP and which IPs are actually in use.
Why spreadsheets fail
- Always behind: a spreadsheet only knows what someone typed — not IPs used without coordination.
- Blind to DHCP: you can't see what DHCP handed out.
- No concurrency: two people can see the same IP as “free” at once.
- IPv6 is practically unmanageable in a spreadsheet.
What a good IPAM does
Subnet tree and occupancy
Hierarchical subnets (a /16 split into /24s, say) with capacity, allocations and occupancy for each.
Live data from scans and DHCP
Beyond what's recorded, IPAM should see what's really on the network — so every IP has a clear state: allocated and live, allocated but silent, DHCP lease, or unknown.
Unknown-IP detection
The most valuable feature for security and order: an address that's live but neither allocated nor leased — typically uncoordinated devices, hand-set static IPs, or something that shouldn't be there.
VLANs and IP requests
Subnets linked to VLANs, and a simple request-and-approve workflow for new IPs.
Migrating from a spreadsheet
- Import your current subnets and VLANs.
- Run discovery across every subnet.
- Review differences: unknown IPs, and recorded addresses that don't answer.
- Connect your DHCP sources.
- From then on, allocate IPs only through IPAM.
Conclusion
Good IPAM is a live picture of your address space, checked against reality. In BehMon, IPAM — IPv4 and IPv6, live scan and DHCP data, unknown-IP detection, VLANs and IP requests — is part of one integrated network record.