Troubleshooting DHCP is actually a lot trickier than you might think.

For example DHCP might, or might not be broadcast-based, the conversations are either broadcast, unicast or both. And lastly, network equipment can change this behavior by using commands such as ‘dhcp relay’, ‘ip helper’ and ‘port forward’.

In this example, I wanted to go through a tracefile where the clients were not successfully getting a DHCP assigned address.

The first thing we need to establish is if the DHCP server and network infrastructure is the issue.

For example, are the packets getting to and from the DHCP server, is the DHCP server up, etc..

In the video I show you how I analyzed this trace file along with my typical tips and tricks.

Enjoy