Why doesnt DHCP work as it should in theory?

[sidewinder]

Theory has always told me that when a PC gets a DHCP address, it will try to renew 50% through the lease, if it cannot, it will try again at 75%, and if it still cant, it actually expires at the end.

Our DHCP lease duration is set to 8 days. So a PC SHOULD be able to go for at least 4 days with no DHCP server yes?

However, whenever we have a problem with DHCP, for example a few weeks ago we rebooted the server and DHCP didnt start. Shouldnt be a problem right? Well, no-one could log on. I would expect some PC's whose lease had run out to not be able to, but NO-ONE could

Also if we say reboot a PC and it cant find the DHCP server due to network traffic etc, it instantly gives itself a 169.x address. Yet if it has only just got a lease on the last reboot (say its a new build) shouldnt it keep the address?

I dont know if something is configured wrong or if my theories about DHCP are just wrong?

[ChrisH]

It still looks to the server for the lease information.

[Geoff]

According to the DHCP RFC specs, yes what you say is what should happen. However MS's implementation of the RFC spec is faulty/broken/wrong.

You might want to consider using two DHCP servers if your having reliablility problems.

[SimpleSi]

I thought the renewal times applied to a computer that is switched on for that length of time.

If you switch it off and on again then its going to go through the whole DHCP discovery process - no DHCP server - then no server assigned address.

(Then it trys alternate address if provided - then defaults to a 169.xxx number)

regards

Simon

[Geoff]

No, the client is supposed to preserve it's lease information between reboots. Linux does this by recording it in '/var/dhcp/dhcp.leases' for instance.

If it didn't you'd be able to DoS a DHCP server by repeatedly rebooting your machine. Each time it wold request a new lease, until the DHCP server ran out of addresses.

[sidewinder]

OK fair enough

I was thinking about adding a second one so the load is evened out a bit

Was thinking of giving both the entire scope then excluding half on each one

Thing is, is this going to give me major problems if I do it during term time?
Would it be better to create the second one, get that authorised and live and then set up the exclusion on the original one?

[sidewinder]

No, the client is supposed to preserve it's lease information between reboots. Linux does this by recording it in '/var/dhcp/dhcp.leases' for instance.

If it didn't you'd be able to DoS a DHCP server by repeatedly rebooting your machine. Each time it wold request a new lease, until the DHCP server ran out of addresses.

Good, I thought clients should be able to. So it could be a MS oddity then?

But surely you couldnt DoS a server that way, because its still going to have the lease information in its database, so even if a client does keep requesting, its always going to give it the same address

[Geoff]

It's supposed to, but MS DHCP server doesn't do it reliably. Hence my earlier comment about it being broken. :P

[sidewinder]

So you recommend I implement a Linux one then :P

[Geoff]

You need to migrate your DNS too.

DNSMasq has all the features you need.

[SimpleSi]

As an experiment I just tried rebooting my Xubuntu test machine (i'm at home ) and it did not retain its IP address after disconnecting it from DHCP server and rebooting it. (Not suprisingly really)

So in practice I don't think this is a windows/linux issue at all.

regards
Simon

[djm968]

I would investigate why DCHP didn't start after re-booting the server, especially if the sever is the PDC for your domain.

[sidewinder]

It was only that once, subsequent reboots have been fine

The error I got that day was "The DHCP Server Failed to see a directory server for authorization"

However there were no other errors that would indicate something else hadnt started that could have caused it to not authorise

For static IP clients the network was working perfectly

[Geoff]

As an experiment I just tried rebooting my Xubuntu test machine (i'm at home ) and it did not retain its IP address after disconnecting it from DHCP server and rebooting it. (Not suprisingly really)

Obviously if there's no DHCP server it can't safely assume that it can use its old IP address.

What it'll do when it contacts the DHCP server is ask 'Can I have my old IP back?' instead of blindly saying 'I need an IP!'

[Disease]

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is an Internet protocol for automating the configuration of computers that use TCP/IP. DHCP can be used to automatically assign IP addresses, to deliver TCP/IP stack configuration parameters such as the subnet mask and default router,and to provide other configuration information such as the addresses for printer, time and news servers.

It's not a windows problem, its required.

Each time you reboot the client it says to the DHCP can I have the address I am leased, the server says yes. DHSP holds the lease not the client.

DHCP is not broken on windows and is working as intended.