DHCP for Windows 2000

Chapter 4. Designing a DHCP Infrastructure

DHCP can quickly become an essential piece of an organization’s data network. Once set up, DHCP is usually hardly noticed, silently and faithfully performing its duties day in and day out. Unfortunately, the hardest thing with DHCP is getting it to that point.

This chapter discusses the reasons an organization would want to use DHCP, along with the many different issues that need to be considered when designing a DHCP infrastructure.

Some of these considerations include planning for IP address use. An organization needs to determine how their existing environment is used as well as what types of users and workstations exist, such as mobile users and network devices.

The needs of a DHCP client must be considered, including which DHCP options are supported by the client’s operating system and which options and their values need to be assigned.

In large-scale DHCP implementations, the topology of the network becomes a very important factor. The network topology dictates where DHCP servers and/or relay agents must be placed.

A final consideration is planning for fault tolerance. Once DHCP is implemented, it quickly becomes a service that the entire network is dependent on. Steps can be taken to ensure that DHCP will be available at all times.

Who Needs DHCP?

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created this new protocol, DHCP, to dynamically distribute IP addresses and configurations to clients. But what types of organizations would benefit ...