How to get Windows 2003 DHCP to work

[cantina]

Hi,

We have a Pix 506e firewall, and we're setting up a remote office in Tucson. We will connect the offices via PIX IPSEC VPN tunnel, but I'm wondering how to get the DHCP server in the central site to allocate addresses to the Tucson site. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Cantina

 

[REstabrook]

Windows DHCP will not pass an address through a router. You will need to set up a Win Server as a DHCP Relay Agent. The Relay agent will then allocate addresses to clients.
Rick Estabrook

 

[chicocouk]

Pix can also be a dhcp relay agent, of course, see;

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products..._guide_chapter09186a0080172790.html#wp1076424

But I'd respectfully suggest this is a bad idea. If your internet connection or ipsec tunnel goes down the Tuscon site will be unable to work, as none of the machines will be able to get an ip address.

In addition, you need the remote office to be on a different ip range from the main office, to get your vpn tunnel routing to work properly. So how do you intend to specify in the dhcp server that the remote office gets one range, and the local office gets another? By Mac address? You might as well assign static ips at that point.

Install a local dhcp server at the remote office, or assign static ips if the remote office is small enough.

CCNA, CCSA, MCSE, Cisco Firewall specialist, VPN specialist, wannabe CCSP