coordinating multiple DHCP servers?

James Hartley jjhartley at gmail.com
Fri Oct 12 22:29:32 UTC 2007


I am attempting to coordinate multiple DHCP servers.

Upon selection of an IP address to assign to a client, is it
guaranteed that a DHCP server will send out an ARP request to
determine whether the IP address is already in use?

If a DHCP server has a pool defined for 100 leases & all 100 leases
have been assigned, will the DHCP server ignore the 101th request for
a lease?

One scheme to coordinate multiple DHCP servers is to further segment
the subnet.  ie.  assuming two servers are used, one server might
allocate addresses from the upper half of the subnet while the other
allocates addresses from the lower half.  Yet if sufficient end
devices exist on the subnet & the one server goes down, the other may
not be able to honor all lease requests.  Is there a better heuristic
for coordinating multiple DHCP servers such that one doesn't issue an
IP address already been allocated by another?

Any insight which can be shared would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Jim


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