Overview of DHCP

As you saw in Chapter 12, TCP/IP is the priority protocol for Windows Server 2008 R2. There are two ways to have clients and servers get TCP/IP addresses:

  • You can manually assign the addresses.
  • The addresses can be assigned automatically.

Manually assigning addresses is a fairly simple process. An administrator goes to each of the machines on the network and assigns TCP/IP addresses. The problem with this method arises when the network becomes midsize or larger. Think of an administrator trying to individually assign 4,000 TCP/IP addresses, subnet masks, default gateways, and all other configuration options needed to run the network.

DHCP’s job is to centralize the process of IP address and option assignment. You can configure ...

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