Cisco Routers as DHCP Servers

Hi!

Got to the part in oddom book were he talks about DCHP Relay and setting routers as DHCP server and I was wondering how that would be implemented in an enterprise network!

Would there be a couple of central routers assigning address like in a windows or linux solution or every router would assign addresses to their connected vlans?

Is using routers as DHCP server even a common practice? Are they as flexible as dedicated servers?

I can see it being used on small networks but is it viable on large enterprises?

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Comments

FloOz

For smaller businesses I can see it being used. However in a larger enterprise network you would use a dhcp server

pamccabe

I don't know what best practice dictates, but from what I've heard is that not too many people use the routers as DHCP servers. Reason being is that if pools start getting too large it can take away cpu cycles from other processes and it is easier to manage as a dedicated server. That is what I was told in a Cisco IRC channel when I had the same question. Take that for what it's worth.

fly2dw

Yeah I agree with Flo0Z. We put DHCP on the router on sites where we have no reason to place a server locally as they connect to resources off site, however the WAN connection is slow and unreliable for them. Otherwise if there was a reason to deploy a server we would generally add DHCP services on that server, but no point for a small site putting in a dedicated server for DHCP "only" and especially if you are using Microsoft and have to pay for a license just for DHCP. If the connection was good and the setup was in place we would even, just use the router as a DHCP relay to another site as you have read about.

Unidade01

Thanks for the answers

so to summarize: Routers as DHCP server are only used if using a dedicated server is not an option.

That means it's not very common solution

jsb515

FloOz wrote: »

For smaller businesses I can see it being used. However in a larger enterprise network you would use a dhcp server

yep, thats how we do it on our enterprise network.