IP address management is streamlined so the task is faster and can be shared — rather than being a full-time job

Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

With more than 8,800 part-time and full-time staff members, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and the College of Medicine have many thousands of IP addresses to track. Plus, with over 850,000 visits per year to the clinic and trauma center, critical telephone discussions are taking place around the clock.

Challenge

As the Medical Center rapidly expanded, tracking IP addresses manually with spreadsheets had become increasing cumbersome, and by 2006 was a full-time job. Ken Rudolph, Network Engineering-Infrastructure, recalls: “I was given this task, which had the potential to completely monopolize my working day and take me away from my networking responsibilities.” Making this challenge even more daunting was the vendor of the old IP management system: the equipment and software were not kept up-to-date, the service was substandard, and licensing was per address — so that each year the Medical Center was relentlessly getting less for more. 8,800

Staff Members 850,000

Visits Per Year