CISCO DHCP Primer

I am a firm believer that network technicians should know more than the traditional networking skills. For example, I assume that many of you know how to assign an IP address to a router/switch, configure a password and the commands required for your various routing protocols.

But do you know how to configure your Cisco switch or router as a DHCP server, not a relay or ip helper address, but a real DHCP server?

I’ve been using this tip for years. The first time I used this was when I was presenting at some workshops and needed to configure IP addresses on the attendees devices. I didn’t want to risk people mistyping or having to figure out how to assign an IP address (ie smartphone). It took a bit of time the first time around, but after that it was pretty straight forward. This skill became valuable in my labs, when teaching onsite classes on isolated networks and when installing equipment on networks that are not yet connected to the corporate infrastructure.

I encourage you to watch the video and give it a try on your lab equipment or your network emulator of choice like GNS3 or Packet Tracer.

As promised in the video, here is the URL to the Cisco PDF what contains configuration and troubleshooting commands;

http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/ios/12_2/ipaddr/command/reference/fipras_r/1rfdhcp.pdf

Enjoy