“Tired of running around typing in all those IP and Ethernet
addresses each time you add a user to your network? You need to use
DHCP — the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. We show you how to
set up, troubleshoot, and secure a DHCP server.”
“You know the drill. You’ve got a brand new machine to put on
your network, so you go to the cube, poke around a bit, and then
sit in front of the new machine and type. It’s one of the most
tedious jobs for any system administrator to have to perform:
shuffling from machine to machine and keying in IP addresses, host
names, and hardware addresses so that the new computer can talk to
the network. You can speed things up with a configuration program
like linuxconf or yast, but it is still a hassle to do this on
every machine on your network. And when you change something on the
network, you have to go through the process all over again.”
“There are others out there who feel your pain. And the more
industrious of them have figured out a way to lessen it. The
pain-killer is called the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
(DHCP) and thanks to the folks at the Internet Software Consortium,
you can use it to plug-n-play client machines into your network and
as-sign them IP addresses with basically no additional
configuration effort on your part.”