Dhcp Server
Nadja Norrington
A DHCP Server assigns IP addresses to client computers. This is very often used in enterprise networks to reduce configuration efforts. All IP addresses of all computers are stored in a database that resides on a server machine.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a client/server protocol that automatically provides an Internet Protocol (IP) host with its IP address and other related configuration information such as the subnet mask and default gateway. RFCs 2131 and 2132 define DHCP as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard based on Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP), a protocol with which DHCP shares many implementation details. DHCP allows hosts to obtain required TCP/IP configuration information from a DHCP server.
Windows Server 2016 includes DHCP Server, which is an optional networking server role that you can deploy on your network to lease IP addresses and other information to DHCP clients. All Windows-based client operating systems include the DHCP client as part of TCP/IP, and DHCP client is enabled by default.
With DHCP, this entire process is automated and managed centrally. The DHCP server maintains a pool of IP addresses and leases an address to any DHCP-enabled client when it starts up on the network. Because the IP addresses are dynamic (leased) rather than static (permanently assigned), addresses no longer in use are automatically returned to the pool for reallocation.
The network administrator establishes DHCP servers that maintain TCP/IP configuration information and provide address configuration to DHCP-enabled clients in the form of a lease offer. The DHCP server stores the configuration information in a database that includes:
Requested DHCP options, which are additional parameters that a DHCP server is configured to assign to clients. Some examples of DHCP options are Router (default gateway), DNS Servers, and DNS Domain Name.
The technology eliminates the need for individually configuring network devices manually, and consists of two network components, a centrally installed network DHCP server and client instances of the protocol stack on each computer or device. When connected to the network, and periodically thereafter, a client requests a set of parameters from the server using DHCP.
DHCP can be implemented on networks ranging in size from residential networks to large campus networks and regional ISP networks.[2] Many routers and residential gateways have DHCP server capability. Most residential network routers receive a unique IP address within the ISP network. Within a local network, a DHCP server assigns a local IP address to each device.
The Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) was defined in 1984[3] for the configuration of simple devices, such as diskless workstations, with a suitable IP address. Acting in the data link layer, it made implementation difficult on many server platforms. It required that a server be present on each individual network link. RARP was superseded by the Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) defined in September 1985.[4] This introduced the concept of a relay agent, which allowed the forwarding of BOOTP packets across networks, allowing one central BOOTP server to serve hosts on many IP subnets.
Internet Protocol (IP) defines how devices communicate within and across local networks on the Internet. A DHCP server can manage IP settings for devices on its local network, e.g., by assigning IP addresses to those devices automatically and dynamically.[11]
On large networks that consist of multiple links, a single DHCP server may service the entire network when aided by DHCP relay agents located on the interconnecting routers. Such agents relay messages between DHCP clients and DHCP servers located on different subnets.
The DHCP employs a connectionless service model, using the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). It is implemented with two UDP port numbers for its operations which are the same as for the bootstrap protocol (BOOTP). The server listens on UDP port number 67, and the client listens on UDP port number 68.
DHCP operations fall into four phases: server discovery, IP lease offer, IP lease request, and IP lease acknowledgement. These stages are often abbreviated as DORA for discovery, offer, request, and acknowledgement.
The DHCP operation begins with clients broadcasting a request. If the client and server are in different Broadcast Domains, a DHCP Helper or DHCP Relay Agent may be used. Clients requesting renewal of an existing lease may communicate directly via UDP unicast, since the client already has an established IP address at that point. Additionally, there is a BROADCAST flag (1 bit in 2 byte flags field, where all other bits are reserved and so are set to 0) the client can use to indicate in which way (broadcast or unicast) it can receive the DHCPOFFER: 0x8000 for broadcast, 0x0000 for unicast.[8] Usually, the DHCPOFFER is sent through unicast. For those hosts which cannot accept unicast packets before IP addresses are configured, this flag can be used to work around this issue.
The DHCP client broadcasts a DHCPDISCOVER message on the network subnet using the destination address 255.255.255.255 (limited broadcast) or the specific subnet broadcast address (directed broadcast). A DHCP client may also request an IP address in the DHCPDISCOVER, which the server may take into account when selecting an address to offer.
When a DHCP server receives a DHCPDISCOVER message from a client, which is an IP address lease request, the DHCP server reserves an IP address for the client and makes a lease offer by sending a DHCPOFFER message to the client. This message contains the client's client id (traditionally a MAC address), the IP address that the server is offering, the subnet mask, the lease duration, and the IP address of the DHCP server making the offer. The DHCP server may also take notice of the hardware-level MAC address in the underlying transport layer: according to current RFCs the transport layer MAC address may be used if no client ID is provided in the DHCP packet.
The DHCP server determines the configuration based on the client's hardware address as specified in the CHADDR (client hardware address) field. In the following example the server (192.168.1.1) specifies the client's IP address in the YIADDR (your IP address) field.
In response to the DHCP offer, the client replies with a DHCPREQUEST message, broadcast to the server,[a] requesting the offered address. A client can receive DHCP offers from multiple servers, but it will accept only one DHCP offer. Before claiming an IP address, the client will broadcast an ARP request, in order to find if there is another host present in the network with the proposed IP address. If there is no reply, this address does not conflict with that of another host, so it is free to be used.
When the DHCP server receives the DHCPREQUEST message from the client, the configuration process enters its final phase. The acknowledgement phase involves sending a DHCPACK packet to the client. This packet includes the lease duration and any other configuration information that the client might have requested. At this point, the IP configuration process is completed.
A DHCP client may request more information than the server sent with the original DHCPOFFER. The client may also request repeat data for a particular application. For example, browsers use DHCP Inform to obtain web proxy settings via WPAD.
The client sends a request to the DHCP server to release the DHCP information and the client deactivates its IP address. As client devices usually do not know when users may unplug them from the network, the protocol does not mandate the sending of DHCP Release.
A DHCP server can provide optional configuration parameters to the client. RFC 2132 describes the available DHCP options defined by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) - DHCP and BOOTP PARAMETERS.[13]
A DHCP client can select, manipulate and overwrite parameters provided by a DHCP server. In Unix-like systems this client-level refinement typically takes place according to the values in the configuration file /etc/dhclient.conf.
An option exists to identify the vendor and functionality of a DHCP client. The information is a variable-length string of characters or octets which has a meaning specified by the vendor of the DHCP client. One method by which a DHCP client can communicate to the server that it is using a certain type of hardware or firmware is to set a value in its DHCP requests called the Vendor Class Identifier (VCI) (Option 60).
The value to which this option is set gives the DHCP server a hint about any required extra information that this client needs in a DHCP response. Some types of set-top boxes set the VCI to inform the DHCP server about the hardware type and functionality of the device. An Aruba campus wireless access point, for example, supplies value 'ArubaAP' as option 60 in its DHCPDISCOVER message.[19] The DHCP server can then augment its DHCPOFFER with an IP address of an Aruba wireless controller in option 43, so the access point knows where to register itself.
In small networks, where only one IP subnet is being managed, DHCP clients communicate directly with DHCP servers. However, DHCP servers can also provide IP addresses for multiple subnets. In this case, a DHCP client that has not yet acquired an IP address cannot communicate directly with a DHCP server not on the same subnet, as the client's broadcast can only be received on its own subnet.
If the client's implementation of the IP stack does not accept unicast packets when it has no IP address yet, the client may set the broadcast bit in the FLAGS field when sending a DHCPDISCOVER packet.The relay agent will use the 255.255.255.255 broadcast IP address (and the clients MAC address) to inform the client of the server's DHCPOFFER.
In order for rebinding to work, when the client successfully contacts a backup DHCP server, that server must have accurate information about the client's binding. Maintaining accurate binding information between two servers is a complicated problem; if both servers are able to update the same lease database, there must be a mechanism to avoid conflicts between updates on the independent servers. A proposal for implementing fault-tolerant DHCP servers was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force, but never formalized.[28][c]
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