Windows Server Cookbook

Chapter 14. DHCP Server

Introduction

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is prevalent within most organizations. If you have more than three or four client computers, statically configuring IP addresses and network settings can be a support burden. DHCP makes the job of assigning IP addresses much easier because instead of manually configuring each computer on your network, DHCP does it for you. Dynamically assigning IP addresses and reclaiming them when they are no longer being used also makes more efficient use of your address space.

DHCP is a simple yet effective protocol that allows a computer booting up with no prior TCP/IP network configuration to obtain an IP address, called a lease, and various network settings, called options, such as the default router, DNS servers, and default domain name. For details on how DHCP works, see RFC 2131: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2131.txt.

The Microsoft DHCP Server is one of the most popular DHCP servers available. It’s included with the Windows Server operating system and is simple to configure and maintain. In this chapter, I’ll cover several recipes that walk you through the setup and configuration of DHCP Server.

Using a Graphical User Interface

DHCP Server comes with the DHCP MMC snap-in (dhcpmgmt.msc) that can be used to configure and manage scopes, superscopes, leases, reservations, and options. This is the graphical tool I use for most recipes in this chapter.

Using a Command-Line Interface

The netsh tool allows you to configure ...