Functional DHCP Solution Design
Networks get larger over time, unless a company is in the process of going out of business. One of the greatest challenges you face as a network administrator and architect is how you assign and manage your IP addresses and related IP addressing information, such as WINS and DNS Server address assignments. Historically, this was a complex affair where system administrators and their assistants would manually assign IP addresses to workstations through the network. This manual approach was error prone, and forced administrators to try to figure out which machine had what IP address, and what IP addresses were still available.
Because of the increased complexity of modern TCP/IP-based networks, automation is the best solution for assigning and managing IP addresses. This is the job of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server (DHCP Server). The DHCP Server assigns and manages all the IP addressing information for network clients in your organization and greatly simplifies your job as a network administrator and architect.
At the end of this module, you will be able to:
Module Objectives
- Recognize DHCP as a solution for the IP-configuration needs of an organization
- Identify DHCP configuration features supported by the DHCP service
- Describe how the DHCP service integrates with other services in Windows® 2000
- Describe how to design a DHCP service in a non-routed LAN environment
- Describe how to place DHCP Relay Agents and Servers in a routed network
- Describe how a DHCP Server services non-Microsoft hosts
In the next lesson, you will learn which decisions you will need to make in order design a functional DHCP solution.
