DHCP ? 1

[campyracr]

I've been looking in the FAQs & what not. Other than the obvious timesavings in configuring network settings, is there any performance advantage to having DHCP on a network rather than static IPs?

If memory serves correct, there is not an advantage but I need to bolster my argument for DHCP with mgt/co-workers

 

[Dmasch]

Other than the fact that it saves you time in configuring large networks I don't think it makes things faster. In fact from what I have been told is that is you don't need to use it (like in smaller networks and machines aren't coming and going from the network) It is in fact faster to have static IP address. You will notice the machine will boot faster also b/c at boot up time this is when they go search for the dhcp server and if they already have a static IP address there is no need for this. Network traffic will decrease also because there will be no releasing and renewing of addresses. If you have a small managable network then I see no problem if you want to have static IP's. This is my opinon but you might want to get some second advice. Hope this helps you.

 

[campyracr]

That's what I thought. We however, have about 15K connections although 300-400 are static IPs for printers, switches, servers etc.
THanks

 

[BradSQLGuy]

Personally I feel DHCP is a huge time saver. If I need to reinstall the OS or reinstall network services I don't have to worry about documentation of which computer has which IP so I don't duplicate them. Although you can mark the box sometimes tags can get worn off. Also since we are all human we can make the mistake of entering the wrong IP. This can easily happen if you are reimaging or configuaring multiple PC's at the sametime. DHCP does take up a little bit of your bandwidth but I feel it's well worth it. If you need static addresses to certain machines you can easily set this up on the DHCP server also. This way you can decide who needs a static and who needs dynamic. The advantage to static is the IP never expires. IP's get renewed if you put a lease on them. Putting a lease on them gives you the advantage of if you don't have enough IP's for everyone during different shifts you can expire an IP and force them to renew it. For instance if you have 300 workers that come in and normally work an 8 hr. shift in the morning. Then you have another 200 people come to work in the evening and you are faced with only haveing 400 IP's. You can set a lease to those IP's and force a renew allowing the other 200 people to get an IP yet allowing the people that have to stay after work the ability to work over the network. It really all depends on your situation.

I just wanted to give my own opinion on this. -Brad
A+, MCSE NT4, MCDBA SQL7

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