IP address management vendor Infoblox is making available an appliance designed to help IT managers provide network services such as DNS and DHCP to distributed branch locations.

Infoblox sells data centre and other appliances to help customers implement and automate the delivery of network services such as Domain Name System for naming, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IP addressing, and Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) for authentication. The company this week added the Infoblox-250 appliance to its suite, offering customers an alternative to general purpose servers and software for such network services in branch offices.

"The 250 is perfect for remote and branch sites that have no skilled IT professionals at the location, such as retail stores," says Cricket Liu, vice president of architecture at Infoblox. "This appliance would replace servers and require less maintenance on site."

The Infoblox-250 also will be able to tap updated operating systems software the company announced this week. In addition to support for full-stack IPv6, the software includes IPv6 troubleshooting tools, including ping6 and traceroute6. The appliance also ties into Infoblox's grid technology that ensures if one device goes down, a neighbouring device will continue to deliver services to that location. The 1 rack unit branch appliance delivers up to 3,000 DNS queries and 25 DHCP leases per second, Infoblox says.

The company competes with others in the IP address management market, such as BlueCat Networks, MetaInfo, Lucent, Nortel, Cisco and INS. The Infoblox-250 appliance is available now and costs about $US2,500.