What is a DHCP server?

----------------------A DHCP server assigns IP addresses to client computers every time when they request it. The computer that participate in a network asks for it's IP address at startup. This is very often used in enterprise networks to reduce the configuration effort. All IP addresses of all computers are stored in a database that resides on a server machine. What is this DHCP server good for? ---------------------------------I experienced the following situation: I have a desktop computer and a laptop at work. Whenever I take my laptop home I have to turn off the DHCP support and type in an IP address and a subnet mask to communicate between my home computer and the laptop. When I take the laptop back to work I have to enable the DHCP support again. This is very annoying and time consuming, because Windows requires a reboot after a change in the IP settings. With this DHCP server I can use my home computer as a DHCP server and I can simply put the laptop on my small IP network at home without any changes in the IP settings. How to setup the static DHCP server? -----------------------------------1. Put the dhcpsrv.exe and dhcpsrv.ini file into the same directory somewhere on your computer. 2. You need to know the physical address of the computers that are supposed to get an IP address assigned. The physical address consists of 6 bytes and are given in hexadecimal notation. Example: 01-02-03-04-05-06. 3a. Open the dhcpsrv.ini file and create a section for each client including his (unique) IP address. Example: [01-02-03-04-05-06] IPADDR=1.2.3.4 [01-02-03-04-05-07] IPADDR=1.2.3.5 3b. From V1.5 on you can also let the DHCP server perform an auto-configuration. Instead of creating a section [01-02-03-04-05-06] IPADDR=1.2.3.4 you can let the DHCP server do that for you. You only need to add the following to your settings section: [Settings] IPPOOL_1=1.2.3.4-200

Every unknown client will be automatically added to the INI file just the same way as if you had put it in there manually. Note that you can have as many as 10 different IP pools (IPPOOL_0 ... IPPOOL_9). Each pool defines ip addresses of the form a1.a2.a3.a4-b4. All IP addresses between a1.a2.a3.a4 and a1.a2.a3.b4 are part of the pool. 4. Some settings are common for every client computer. You can put them into a [General] section. Everything that is not found in the physical address section is looked up in the general section. Here is a typical [General] section: [General] SUBNETMASK=255.255.255.0 NODETYPE=8 ; Hybrid 5. You can setup additional entries. These entries are Router, DNS and DOMAINNAME: Router -----ROUTER_1=1.2.3.4 .. ROUTER_9=1.2.3.9 DNS server ---------DNS_1=1.2.3.10 .. DNS_9=1.2.3.19 DOMAINNAME=mydomain 6. Start the dhcpsrv.exe. If you are running Windows NT or Windows 2000/XP/VISTA then the dhcpsrv will ask you whether you want to use it as a service or not. This is a new feature in the version 1.3. The advantage of a service is that you don't need to logon to start the dhcp server - it is automatically started. You can not use the dhcp server as a service, if you use Windows 9x. I recommend to put the dhcpsrv.exe into the autostart folder if you are not running it as a service. 7. After you installed the dhcp server as a service you can use the dhcpsrv.exe itself to start or stop the service. Simply start it again. Otherwise you will find a little icon in the lower right corner of your screen that allows you to stop the dhcp server. If you have any questions or recommendations: E-Mail me: Uwe.Ruttkamp@gmx.net or visit my WEB page: http://ruttkamp.gmxhome.de/