Considering The Length Of Leases - Novell NETWARE 6-DOCUMENTATION Manual

Considering the Length of Leases

When considering the length of leases, ask these questions:
Will the default of three days work well in your environment?
The default of three days provides a good balance between a long-lease
and a short-lease duration.
Do you have more users than IP addresses?
If you have more users than IP addresses, keep leases short to allow
access to more users. A short lease could be 15 to 30 minutes, two to four
hours, or even a matter of days.
If your site's usage pattern shows that all clients request an address every
day and you have half as many addresses as users, lease times in hours or
minutes would provide access to more users.
Do you provide support for remote access?
If your site has mobile users or provides remote access to clients, plan to
provide service for these clients on a specific subnet. Providing support,
including special options the clients might require, makes network
administration of the clients easier.
Do you support a minimum lease time?
If your site's usage pattern indicates that your users typically use an
address for only one or two hours, that should be your minimum lease
time.
How many clients do you plan to support?
Shorter leases support more clients, but shorter leases also increase the
load on the DHCP server and network bandwidth. A lease of two hours is
long enough to serve most users, and the network load should be
negligible. A lease of one hour or less might increase network load to a
point that requires attention.
How fast are your communications connections between your clients and
the DHCP server?
By locating a DHCP server in close proximity to its users, the network
load should be neglible over LAN connections. If a DHCP server must
communicate over WAN links to provide service to clients, slowdowns
and time-outs might occur.
How long does your typical server outage last?
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Planning