What is DHCP and Why is It Useful?

In this lecture, we are going to discuss DHCP, basically what it is, and why it is useful, and why you need to understand what it is.

So, DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

It’s a Network Service that provides automatic IP Address configurations to your DHCP Clients, which could be a Laptop, could be a mobile phone, tablet, anything that connects to your network, Desktop or Server. Generally, Servers don’t use DHCP but they could in theory. So, any network device that is configured to use DHCP would be a DHCP Client.

Now, DHCP could be installed on a server, it could be installed on a Network Device you think of as your Home Router, almost all Home Routers act as a DHCP Server.

Now, Why Is It Useful?

It simplifies and automates the mass configuration of your network clients.

Imagine this scenario where you have 200 Laptops on the same network, and imagine that they are constantly moved between one network to another, let’s say you have an office and those employees are bringing their Laptops from office A to office B in separate networks, maybe they are separate subnets, you would have to configure the Static IP Address on those Laptops every time they are moved from one network through another, and it would be a big pain because you have to make sure you don’t hand-out and IP Address that’s already in use because you will create an IP conflict, and it just would be a lot of work.

Well, DHCP automates the entire process, all you have to do is plug in your Laptops or connect to the Wi-Fi, and it will automatically find and obtain an IP Address that is available.

So, when it comes to DHCP there’s a couple…