# How does Ansible handle IP address duplication?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [May 6, 2020, 11:42am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862 "2020-05-06T11:42:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Gary\_Barber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ee7513/32.png) [@Gary\_Barber](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Gary_Barber)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2020, 11:42am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862/1 "2020-05-06T11:42:24Z")

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In my network I manage multiple customers on seperate networks. Many of which are owned by the customer.

I want to use Ansible to manage servers in these networks from a single managament network that has connectivity to all customer networks.

The problem is that some customer, due to owning and running their own networks, have overlapping IP ranges, so more than one server will have the same end IP address.

How does Ansible work in this situation?

If I open firewalls directly from my single Ansible server, how does Ansible handle situations where servers on different customer networks have the same IP address?

Can Ansible work with Proxy servers? Can I setup an Ansible proxy in each customer network to pass through ssh and WinRM traffic? the procy servers would still be managed by the single central Ansible server, so that still leaves the question of how does Ansible handle the duplicate IP’s?

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**Author:** ![Dick\_Visser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@Dick\_Visser](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dick_Visser)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2020, 1:31pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862/2 "2020-05-06T13:31:51Z")

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Look at the jump host example

[https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference\_appendices/faq.html](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/faq.html)

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**Author:** ![Boris\_Muhmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/71e660/32.png) [@Boris\_Muhmer](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Boris_Muhmer)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 6:07am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862/3 "2020-05-08T06:07:40Z")

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That’s just the common “ssh jumphost” pattern.  
I haven’t tried it, yet… but it looks like I have soon. After a quick search I found this information:

[https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference\_appendices/faq.html#how-do-i-configure-a-jump-host-to-access-servers-that-i-have-no-direct-access-to](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/reference_appendices/faq.html#how-do-i-configure-a-jump-host-to-access-servers-that-i-have-no-direct-access-to)

As I said, I only had a brief look at this article, and didn’t test it, yet. But I use ssh jumphosts in many bash scripts.

Regards,  
Boris

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Dick\_Visser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d9b06d/32.png) [@Dick\_Visser](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Dick_Visser)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2020, 9:58am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/how-does-ansible-handle-ip-address-duplication/32862/4 "2020-05-08T09:58:20Z")

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Yup, since ansible uses SSH, you can use whatever SSH uses to overcome  
these issues, in this case jumphosts.  
This is tried and true so should work well.