DHCP Server

[nunob]

I want to setup a dhcp server where I work. We have 2k Advance Server on a poweredge 4300. We have cable through a router right now and I have set all of the addresses to static IP's. I know I need to create a scope what I'm not sure of is do I include the router in my scope and if not how do I set it up to be the gateway to the internet? What about dns I should be able to get those assigned from the router but would it make more sense to get them from our server as well? Anyhow I'm confused and need a little direction. Thanks.

[drewmaztech]

What kind of router are you working with?

It's actually fairly easy to setup the scope in the DHCP server. Then in there you can set the workstation to point to the router as the gateway.
I would setup the DNS server on the W2K server and have it do IP forwarding out to the internet - or you can just add the appropriate internet DNS entries into the DHCP server. I would go for the second option if your network is on the smaller side.

Then just point your workstations to get an IP from the DHCP server. You can even setup the server and test it with 1 or 2 workstations first, as long as your scope doesn't match the existing IP scheme you have. The Static IP workstations will just hum along as usual.

[CeeBee]

At least the gateway and the DNS servers have to be assigned by your DHCP server. You should set up a DNS server on your 2k box (unless it's running AD and a DNS server is already present). Make sure you delete the "." zone from the server otherwise you won't be able to resolve any external name.
BTW, what do you mean by "I have set all of the addresses to static IP's"? Are you talking about the clients? In this case you will have to set them for DHCP... However the server and the gateway MUST have static IP's. Also make sure you set a subnet with enough space for further expansion. Oh, and make sure you have only 1 active DHCP server in your network.

[nunob]

Thanks for the info. BTW CeeBee I was referring to the clients that were set to static IP's already but I want to change this. If I set the scope relatively small now can I change it later as the network grows or should I try to take further growth into consideration now?

[nunob]

Oh and the router is a linksys besfr41 hooked into a Cisco catalyst 2950. So am I following you guys that the router and the server will be static addresses set outside of the scope and the server will be directed to the gateway and pass the info for the gateway and the dns along to the clients? Or am I still confused?

[CeeBee]

Originally posted by nunob
Oh and the router is a linksys besfr41 hooked into a Cisco catalyst 2950. So am I following you guys that the router and the server will be static addresses set outside of the scope and the server will be directed to the gateway and pass the info for the gateway and the dns along to the clients? Or am I still confused?

You can set the scope to include the server(s) and the router and then set one or more exclusion ranges. This will give you more control over asigning IP addresses in the future. Let's say you have the subnet 192.168.0.0/24 and about 100 client machines. I would set the gateway to 192.168.0.1, the server 192.168.0.2 (further servers would be 192.168.0.3,4...) and the scope to assign from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254, and then exclude 1-10 (just think how many servers you might end up with and still leave some room),11-50 and 200-254. This way you can use 192.168.0.11...50 for devices with static IP addresses (ex. network printers, managed switches, computers that for some reason need a static IP, etc.), still having the possibility of extending your dynamic IP range if needed in less than 1 minute... It all depends on the size of your network. As I said, I would set a DNS server on that box and use it instead of forwarding the requests to your ISP's DNS, you improve the response time and you help reduce the traffic a little bit.

[nunob]

Thanks CeeBee worked great! I was a little hesitant to try it without some input I want to only set it up right once not keep changing it every week cause we added something. I excluded two different groups of 15 which should be more than enough for our little network. We have one network printer now and we will be adding one server with AD and a vpn before long guess I better start trying to figure out how to do that.