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DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), a networking protocol, provides a means to allocate IP addresses dynamically to computers on a local area network (LAN).

The DHCP protocol provides three methods of IP address allocation:

• manual allocation, where the allocation is based on a table with MAC address - IP address pairs manually filled by the server admin. Only requesting clients with a MAC address listed in this table get the IP address according to the table.
• automatic allocation, where a free IP address of a range given by the admin is permanently assigned to a requesting client.
• dynamic allocation, the only method which provides dynamic reuse of IP addresses. A network administrator assigns a range of IP addresses to DHCP, and each client computer on the LAN has its TCP/IP software configured to request an IP address from the DHCP server when that client computer's network interface card starts up. The request-and-grant process uses a lease concept with a controllable time period. This eases the network installation procedure on the client computer side considerably.

In addition to the IP address, a DHCP server can provide other information like DNS server addresses, a DNS name or a gateway IP address. Some DHCP server implementations allow for a DNS entry to be updated to reflect the new IP address.

DHCP appeared as a standard protocol in October 1993. provides the latest (March 1997) DHCP definition. The DNS update protocol was established with

The latest work on a protocol describing DHCPv6, DHCP in a IPv6 environment, was published in Microsoft introduced DHCP on their NT server with Windows NT version 3.5 in late 1994. Despite being called a new feature from Microsoft, it was not invented by them.

The Internet Software Consortium published DHCP software distributions for Unix variants with version 1.0.0 of the ISC DHCP Server released on December 6, 1997 and a more RFC compliant version 2.0 on June 22, 1999.

Other major implementations included Cisco with a DHCP server made available in Cisco IOS 12.0 in February 1999 and Sun who added DHCP support in the July 2001 release of Solaris 8.

In addition, several routers provide DHCP support for networks of up to 255 computers.

Protocol Anatomy

DHCP Discover Src=0.0.0.0 Dest=255.255.255.255 OP HTYPE HLEN HOPS 0x01 0x01 0x06 0x00 XID 0x3903F326 SECS FLAGS 0x0000 0x0000 CIADDR 0x00000000 YIADDR 0x00000000 SIADDR 0x00000000 GIADDR 0x00000000 CHADDR 0x00053C04 0x8D590000 0x00000000 0x00000000 192 octets of 0's. BOOTP legacy DHCP option 53: DHCP Discover DHCP option 50: 192.168.1.100 requested

DHCP Offer Src=192.168.1.1 Dest=255.255.255.255 OP HTYPE HLEN HOPS 0x02 0x01 0x06 0x00 XID 0x3903F326 SECS FLAGS 0x0000 0x0000 CIADDR 0x00000000 YIADDR 0xC0A80164 SIADDR 0x00000000 GIADDR 0x00000000 CHADDR 0x00053C04 0x8D590000 0x00000000 0x00000000 192 octets of 0's. BOOTP legacy DHCP option 53: DHCP Offer DHCP option 1: 255.255.255.0 subnet mask DHCP option 3: 192.168.1.1 router DHCP option 51: 1 day IP lease time DHCP option 54: 192.168.1.1 DHCP server

DHCP Request Src=0.0.0.0 Dest=255.255.255.255 OP HTYPE HLEN HOPS 0x01 0x01 0x06 0x00 XID 0x3903F326 SECS FLAGS 0x0000 0x0000 CIADDR 0x00000000 YIADDR 0x00000000 SIADDR 0x00000000 GIADDR 0x00000000 CHADDR 0x00053C04 0x8D590000 0x00000000 0x00000000 192 octets of 0's. BOOTP legacy DHCP option 53: DHCP Request DHCP option 50: 192.168.1.100 requested

DHCP ACK Src=192.168.1.1 Dest=255.255.255.255 OP HTYPE HLEN HOPS 0x02 0x01 0x06 0x00 XID 0x3903F326 SECS FLAGS 0x0000 0x0000 CIADDR 0x00000000 YIADDR 0xC0A80164 SIADDR 0x00000000 GIADDR 0x00000000 CHADDR 0x00053C04 0x8D590000 0x00000000 0x00000000 192 octets of 0's. BOOTP legacy DHCP option 53: DHCP ACK DHCP option 1: 255.255.255.0 subnet mask DHCP option 3: 192.168.1.1 router DHCP option 51: 1 day IP lease time DHCP option 54: 192.168.1.1 DHCP server

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See also: RARP, BOOTP, Zeroconf