TCP/IP Guide

DHCP Lease Address Pools, Ranges, and Address Management

Simpler host configuration methods such as BOOTP (or DHCP manual allocation for that matter) associate a single IP address with each client machine. DHCP dynamic addressing removes this one-to-one correspondence, in favor of flexible address mapping to clients on an as-needed basis. The clients no longer own the addresses, but lease them from the true owner, the server. Thus, a primary job of both a DHCP server and the administrator of that server is to maintain and manage these client addresses.

Address Pool Size Selection

The set of all addresses that a DHCP server has available for assignment is most often called the address pool. The first issue related to address management is ensuring ...