DHCP, routers and servers

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Am i right in sayiing that most routers (enterprise or home) have both a DHCP client and DHCP server programmed into them to allow the assinging of private IPs, where the client accepts the ISPs internet IP assigned to it and the router can also assign private LAN IPs using its DHCP server?

So if this is right it would then make sense how the router could assign IPs via its DHCP server on a peer-to-peer LAN network.

How about a server/client LAN network though, the server (with 2000,2003,2008 etc..on it) also has a DHCP server service as well to assign IPs on it's network. So which one assigns the IPs if using DHCP on a LAN the server or the router??

Ok in packet tracer i am setting up a small LAN with a server and want to have the PCs assiged IPs via DHCP, so after having a look at the server config, it wants a default gateway DHCP IP, a DNS IP (within the DHCP config part), a global gateway IP(this must be the routers IP), another DNS IP and DNS domain name(this name just identifys the server on the domain bit like the workgroup name in a p2p setup?). I understand the DHCP start IP address and max num of users setting etc..

So i am confused as to the role of the router and server with regard to their DHCP role in all this, also the routers in packet tracer have no configurable option to set DHCP settings but from what i have read routers can have a DHCP server for assignments....

here are the availble settings

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Domestic routers have DHCP included because it is needed, along with NAT, for the network to work. Most home users have no other source of DHCP.

Enterprise routers don't have that requirement - but may have DHCP servers.

On a given Ethernet network you can only have one DHCP server - so it is up to the designer which unit provides that.

On my home network I have a DHCP server in the router, and another in the 'main server'. Because the main server ( a Debian box ) is more flexible I use that one, and switch off the server in the router.

Harry.

 

You can't (usually, if ever?) have more than one DHCP server on the same range assigning IPs. I use the router DHCP, but with a reservation for my XPS MAC address.

You can have 2 DHCP boxes (eg 2003) but you need to exclude half of the range from each server. Look up DHCP redundancy.