Understanding Dhcp - Novell NETWARE 6-DOCUMENTATION Manual

Understanding DHCP

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) uses a client-server
structure to provide configuration parameters to hosts. DHCP consists of a
protocol for providing host-specific configuration parameters from a DHCP
server (or collection of DHCP servers) to a host and a mechanism to allocate
network addresses to a host.
NOTE:
In this document, the term host refers to a network device that requires an
IP address and might have a hostname.
When the DHCP server is loaded, it reads its configuration information from
eDirectory and stores the information in its cache. As the DHCP server assigns
addresses to clients, it updates eDirectory, adding IP address objects or
modifying their eDirectory status information. The DHCP server can be
configured to maintain an audit log of this activity. For information about
maintaining an audit log of DHCP server activity, refer to
Auditing" on page 108.
The network administrator can use the DNS/DHCP Management Utility to
view objects to see how addresses have been assigned.
For more information, refer to:
"IP Address Allocation" on page 40
"Managing the Database" on page 42
"DHCP Options" on page 43
"Dynamic DNS" on page 46
"Compatibility with BOOTP" on page 47
"Using a BOOTP Relay Agent" on page 47
"SNMP Event Generation" on page 49
"DHCP Auditing" on page 50
"Configuring DHCP
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Understanding