Cisco IOS Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Using IP Helper Addresses for DHCP

Problem

You want to configure your router to pass DHCP requests from local clients to a centralized DHCP server.

Solution

The ip helper-address configuration command allows the router to forward local DHCP requests to one or more centralized DHCP servers:

Router1#configure terminal 
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Router1(config)#interface Ethernet0
Router1(config-if)#ip helper-address 172.25.1.1
Router1(config-if)#ip helper-address 172.25.10.7
Router1(config-if)#exit
Router1(config)#end
Router1#

Discussion

The traditional role of routers in DHCP has been simply to act as a proxy device, forwarding information between the client and server. Since IOS level 12.0(1)T, Cisco routers also have DHCP server and client features. But the DHCP proxy function is still the most common for routers.

Because the initial DHCP request comes from a client that typically doesn’t have an IP address, it must find the server using a Layer 2 broadcast. So, if the router was not able to function as a proxy for these broadcasts, it would be necessary to put a DHCP server on every network segment.

The DHCP server needs two critical pieces of information before it can allocate an IP address to the client. It must know the subnet that the client is connected to, and it needs the client device’s MAC address. The subnet information is needed to ensure that the address that the server allocates will actually work on client’s network segment. And the MAC ...