What is DHCP Server?

In this article, we will study DHCP servers and their usage in our computer world.

It is well known that each and every entity is provided with some unique identity or ID which helps us to identify them. For eg – Your name is used to identify you, the place you live defines your address, your Roll Number in schools or colleges helps retrieve your information. In technical language, each and every data is provided with some address, known as the IP Address, used to identify the memory location of the program.

A DHCP server is used to configure the devices connected to the computer system automatically by assigning each device a unique IP Address and it also provides a path to the data to be transferred from one place to another through default gateways when the destination is unknown.

A DHCP server is an important network management protocol as it helps different devices to communicate with each other and also allows for the usage of different network services.

Working of DHCP Server

1) Discovery: The client sends a request or message to the DHCP server to reserve an IP address. This is known as IP address lease.

2) Offer: The DHCP server after receiving the request from the client, reserves an IP address for the client for a specified period of time and sends a DHCPOFFER message to the client.

3) Request: After receiving the offer, the client sends a request message to the DHCP server to accept the IP address offered by the DHCP server.

4) Acknowledge: The DHCP server after receiving the request acknowledges it, and grants access to the IP Address, it sends a packet to the client which contains information about the duration of the IP address lease, the IP Address, and all other configuration information.

DHCP servers are very useful and powerful while providing IP addresses to the devices and they make working easy by assigning IP addresses automatically and reducing the hustle of working manually. They can manage billions of networks simultaneously. It uses multithreading to respond to client requests and it can also manage a large amount of data at the same time. In all, the management and automatic assigning of addresses is the biggest advantage of DHCP servers.

So, this is all about the DHCP server in computer networks.