DHCP Protocol

McGraw-Hill ©The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2000

 18-1 INTRODUCTION

Each computer that uses the TCP/IP protocol suite

needs to know its IP address. If the computer uses
classless addressing or is a member of a subnet, it
also needs to know its subnet mask. Most
computers today need two other pieces of
information: the address of a default router to be
able to communicate with other networks and the
address of a name server to be able to use names
instead of addresses as we will see in the next
chapter. In other words, four pieces of information
are normally needed.
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 DHCP

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 DHCP
 DHCP is a client server application

 DHCP server hands out configuration data, based on the

administrator’s policy, to a requesting client

 DHCP provides four pieces of information to a system

 IP address of computer

 Subnet mask of computer

 IP address of router

 IP address of DNS server

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 Predecessors to DHCP

 RARP
 BOOTP

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 Predecessors to DHCP
 RARP – deprecated because
 First, RARP used the broadcast service of the data link layer,
which means that a RARP server must be present in each
network.
 Second, RARP can provide only the IP address of the computer
not other information that DHCP provides

 BOOTP
 Client- server program
 Static binding between physical address and IP address
 Binding is pre-determined

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 18-2 DHCP OPERATION

The DHCP client and server can either be on the

same network or on different networks.

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 Figure 18.1 Client and server on the same network

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 DHCP – same network

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 Figure 18.2 Client and server on two different networks

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 DHCP – different network

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 DHCP – different network

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 Figure 18.3 Use of UDP ports

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 Questions….
 Only servers use well known port. Why UDP port 68 for
client instead of ephemeral port?

 Say, DHCP client uses ephemeral port, what problems

could it cause?

 When 2 DHCP clients send broadcast message how will

they know which server response corresponds to which
client?

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 Figure 18.4 DHCP packet format

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 Figure 18.5 Flag format

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 Figure 18.6 Option format

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 18-3 CONFIGURATION

The DHCP has been devised to provide static and

dynamic address allocation.

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 Figure 18.7 Option with tag 53

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 DORA process in DHCP

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 DHCP Configurations
 Static address allocation

 Dynamic address allocation

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 Figure 18.8 DHCP client transition diagram

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 Figure 18.9 Exchanging messages

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