DHCP
Also called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
Automatic IP address assignment. Convenient on an office network and a liability on a show network, where a device that comes back with a different address after a power cycle is a device the console can no longer find.
Discovery, monitoring, configuration, backups, updates. Useful, and none of it has a deadline of its own.
What kills it. Nothing kills it. That is the problem: with no deadline it has no manners, and it will happily starve everything that does have one. Putting it on a show VLAN is the commonest self-inflicted wound in the industry.
Why this one, and not what the category suggests. Address handout. Nothing that has started working depends on it continuing.
Ports
What goes wrong
Typical use
- Production laptops and phones on a house network
- Large fixed installations with reservations rather than a free pool
- Anywhere devices outnumber the patience for static addressing
Sources
- RFC 2131 — Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol — IETF primary
Known gaps on this entry: first_published, implementations. If you can source one of them, that is a ten minute pull request.
Edit this entry on GitHub — one file, editable in your browser, and your handle goes on it permanently.
Work at IETF? Confirm or correct this entry — it is free, it stays free, and nothing about it is for sale.