IPAM - Concepts

Reviewed on 30 May 2024

CIDR notation

When viewing a private IP address in IPAM, it is shown in CIDR notation. For example, the address 172.16.12.2/22 represents the IPv4 address 172.16.12.2and its associated CIDR block 172.16.12.0/22, defined on the Private Network and containing 1024 addresses.

IPAM

IP Address Manager (IPAM) is Scaleway’s tool for planning, tracking and managing the IP address space of Scaleway products. It acts as a single source of truth for the IP addresses of Scaleway resources. Managed products, such as Databases and Load Balancer, are fully integrated into IPAM, and Private Networks’ DHCP server uses IPAM to assign private, static IP addresses to attached resources.

The public rollout of IPAM functionality is being carried out gradually: IPAM is currently in public beta.

In the console, you can currently use IPAM to view, tag and filter all your private IP addresses
With the API, you can additionally reserve an available IP from a Private Network’s CIDR block, or release a previously-reserved address that you no longer want.

More functionality is planned for the future, including:

Reserve/release private IP addresses in the console
Select a reserved private IP address to use when attaching a resource to a Private Network
Management of public IP addresses

IPv4

Internet Protocol Version 4 is the standard protocol used for IP addresses, and routes most internet traffic as of today. Each IPv4 address has 32 bits. Written in human-readable form, an IPv4 address is generally shown as four octets separated by periods, e.g. 151.115.59.87.

Scaleway resources may have a public IPv4 address (flexible IP) for accessibility from the public internet, and will have a private IPv4 address for each Private Network they are attached to.

IPv6

Internet Protocol Version 6 is the most recent version of the IP protocol used for IP addresses. Each IPv6 address has 128 bits. Written in human-readable form, an IPv6 address can be shown as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, each group representing 16 bits and separated by a colon, e.g. 2001:0DB8:0000:0003:0000:01FF:0000:002E. This can also be notated as 2001:DB8::3:0:1FF:0:2E.

IPv6-compatible Scaleway resources may have a public IPv6 address (flexible IP) for accessibility from the public internet, and will have a private IPv6 address for each Private Network they are attached to.

Private IP address

Private IP addresses identify devices on Private Networks. They are not routed on the public internet, and can be used to route traffic privately between resources attached to the Private Network, as well as to other Private Networks in the same VPC.

When a resource joins a Private Network, the Private Network’s DHCP assigns it a private IPv4 address (and an additional IPv6 address for IPv6-compatible resources) for identification on that network. This IP is selected from the Private Network’s CIDR block. The IP address will then not change unless you detach the resource from the Private Network, or delete the resource.

Public (flexible) IP address

Public IP addresses identify devices on the public internet. You can enter the public IP address of an Instance into any browser connected to the Internet, and access content being served from that Instance.

Depending on the type of resource and its configuration, it may or may not have a public IP address. For example, you can choose to give an Instance one or more public IP addresses (IPv4 and/or IPv6), or alternatively, no public IP address at all.

Public IP addresses at Scaleway are often called flexible IP addresses, because you can move them between different resources. However, flexible IP addresses are scoped to a single product and to a single Availability Zone. If you create a flexible IP address for an Instance in PAR-2, you can move it to a different Instance in PAR-2, but not to an Instance in PAR-1, nor to an Elastic Metal server in any AZ.