On Saturday 14 February 2004 7:32 am, James Knott wrote:
Multiple servers are often used on large networks.
Here's some info from http://www.dhcp-handbook.com/dhcp_faq.html#cdsbe
"20. Can a DHCP server back up another DHCP server?
You can have two or more servers handing out leases for different addresses. If each has a dynamic pool accessible to the same clients, then even if one server is down, one of those clients can lease an address from the other server.
However, without communication between the two servers to share their information on current leases, when one server is down, any client with a lease from it will not be able to renew their lease with the other server. Such communication is the purpose of the "server to server protocol" (see next question). It is possible that some server vendors have addressed this issue with their own proprietary server-to-server communication."
First of all, I'll admit right off that for me this is now a matter of intellectual curiosity, not a practical problem, since I have no plans to install multiple DHCP servers. But the implication of the quote above is that if there are two DHCP servers on the net, they should assign non-overlapping address ranges. Is that correct? And if so, can the servers get into a fight if the address ranges do overlap, with each server handing out the same address x to a different client? (Actually, the fight would then be between the clients, I suppose.) Paul Abrahams