Technical data

Conﬁguring the DHCP Server

Dynamic Host Conﬁguration Protocol (DHCP), a superset of the Bootstrap

Protocol (BOOTP), provides a centralized approach to the conﬁguration and

maintenance of IP address space. It allows the system manager to conﬁgure

various clients on a network from a single location.

DHCP allocates temporary or permanent IP addresses from an address pool to

client hosts on the network. DHCP can also conﬁgure client parameters such as

default gateway parameters, domain name server parameters, and subnet masks

for each host running a DHCP client.

This chapter reviews key DHCP and BOOTP concepts and also describes:

• DHCP server components (Section 7.2)

• DHCP server startup and shutdown(Section 7.3)

• Conﬁguring DHCP server (Section 7.4)

• Using DHCP GUI to conﬁgure DHCP (Section 7.5)

• Conﬁguring DHCP/BOOTP IP addressing (Section 7.6)

• Conﬁguring DHCP manually (Section 7.7)

• Supporting utilities (Section 7.8)

• Solving DHCP server problems (Section 7.9)

7.1 Key Concepts

With DHCP, system managers can centralize TCP/IP network conﬁgurations and

management tasks involved with network connections. DHCP makes network

administration easier by allowing:

• Consistent application of network parameters, such as subnet masks and

default routers, to all hosts on a network

• Support for both DHCP and BOOTP clients

• Static (permanent) mapping of hardware addresses to IP addresses

• Dynamic (temporary) mapping of hardware addresses to IP addresses, where

the client leases the IP address for a deﬁned length of time

In addition, the TCP/IP Services implementation of DHCP includes support for

DHCP server failover in a OpenVMS Cluster environment.

The DHCP protocol is a superset of BOOTP. In addition to the BOOTP

functionality, DHCP offers robust conﬁguration services, including IP addresses,

subnet masks, and default gateways.

Conﬁguring the DHCP Server 7–1