Rookie DHCP question

[redeye]

Hello,

I am trying to get DHCP setup on a new Win2k3 Standard server here. Currently on our network we have two NT4 machines. Each running DHCP with the same scope, just different ends of it.

I guess my question would be, is DHCP domain dependent?

I don't know how the client machines know which server to get IP information from.

[Spoiler]

Its not domain dependent. How it works is the client boots and than send a broadcast to all the machines in the subnet. It asks for a DHCP server to give it a IP. The DHCP server than sends back an answer and gives the client machine a IP and any other settings you setup for that scope. For example...if your running a WINS server you can send that to the client...or the IP of your DNS server....etc...

[viking]

If those servers are in the same local area network you will have problems. The scopes should not cover the same area, they should resolve different areas.
For example, if you have a dhcp server covering the IPs from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.25 and another dhcp server covering IPs from 192.168.0.20 to 192.168.0.50, you could end up having some IPs duplicated in your network. And that's bad, you will have workstations with no network connection (software) but with valid IPs. Difficult to find where the problem lies... They should cover (in my example) areas of IPs like 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.25 (one of the dhcp servers), 192.168.0.26 - 192.168.0.50 (the other dhcp server).

Of course, if those dhcp servers are separated by routers with NAT, you won't have any problem caused by scopes in different dhcp servers.

[redeye]

Thanks for the help! When double checking the servers that are running the DHCP, there is no overlap. I just didn't know which server knew to assign the IP.