Data Networking/Fall 2014/Priya/DHCP/DHCP servers

A DHCP server is a machine that assigns IP addresses automatically to the clients in the network. A DHCP Server can be a host machine or a workstation, that has the capability of assigning pool of addresses to different subnets in the same network segment. Different DHCP Servers are available of which the widely used are WINDOWS DHCP SERVER and the ISC-DHCP servers. the WINDOWS DHCP server is used in enterprises but it comes along with a license. The ISC-DHCP-SERVER is an open source software that can be run on a Linux machine, which is also an open source system that provides free license. ISC stands for Internet System Consortium that offers a solution for implementing DHCP servers that is suitable for small local networks to large enterprises.

The choise of DHCP server for our project is made on the basis of cost of the system. Thus Linux system was our preferred choice and the choice of DHCP server software that can run on this machine is done on various terms. Among all the cost-effective software that are free to use, Jagornet DHCP and ISC DHCP server are of best choice to make. Both of them support with Linux and Jagornet DHCP can also run on different operating systems like Linnux, WINDOWS, MAC OS, etc. Both the Jagornet and ISC-DHCP servers can support features like BOOTP,DHCP, DHCPv6. There the choice can be made between the two as both are equally friendly.For our project we selected ISC-DHCP server as it is much easier to work with since it is written in C language whereas Jagornet is much like JAVA.

Next, we have implemented the client-server architecture, which is a requirement in our project. This architecture requires an always-on device that will serve as a DHCP server. Thus we have installed Linux on separate partition by creating a dual-boot on our laptops.

Our next step is to install and configure ISC-DHCP server ....