A DHCP database agent is any host (for example, an FTP, a TFTP, or a remote copy protocol [RCP] server) or storage media on a DHCP server (for example, disk0) that stores the DHCP bindings database. You can configure multiple DHCP database agents, and the interval between database updates and transfers for each agent.

Automatic bindings are IP addresses that are automatically mapped to the MAC addresses of hosts that are found in the DHCP database. Automatic binding information (such as lease expiration date and time, interface index, and VPN routing and forwarding [VRF] name) is stored in a database agent. The bindings are saved as text records for easy maintenance.

An address conflict occurs when two hosts use the same IP address. During address assignment, DHCP checks for conflicts by using ping and gratuitous Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). If a conflict is detected, the address is removed from the pool. The address is not assigned until the administrator resolves the conflict.

Note

We strongly recommend using database agents. However, the Cisco DHCP server can run without database agents. If you choose not to configure a DHCP database agent, disable the recording of DHCP address conflicts on the DHCP server by using the no ip dhcp conflict logging command in global configuration mode. If there is a conflict logging but no database agent is configured, bindings are lost when a device reboots. Possible false conflicts can occur causing the address to be removed from the address pool.

The IP address configured on a device interface is automatically excluded from the DHCP address pool. The DHCP server assumes that all other IP addresses in a DHCP address pool subnet are available for assigning to DHCP clients.

You must exclude addresses from the pool if the DHCP server does not allocate those IP addresses to DHCP clients. Consider a scenario where two DHCP servers are set up for the same network segment (subnet) for redundancy. If DHCP servers do not coordinate their services with each other using a protocol such as DHCP failover, each DHCP server must be configured to allocate addresses from a nonoverlapping set of addresses in the shared subnet. See the Example: Configuring Manual Bindings section for a configuration example.

An address binding is a mapping between the IP address and MAC address of a client. The IP address of a client can be assigned manually by an administrator or assigned automatically from a pool by a DHCP server.

Manual bindings are IP addresses that are manually mapped to MAC addresses of hosts that are found in the DHCP database. Manual bindings are stored in the NVRAM of the DHCP server. Manual bindings are just special address pools. There is no limit to the number of manual bindings, but you can configure only one manual binding per host pool.

Automatic bindings are IP addresses that have been automatically mapped to MAC addresses of hosts that are found in the DHCP database. Because the bindings are stored in the volatile memory of the DHCP server, binding information is lost in the event of power failures or on device reloads. To prevent the loss of automatic binding information, a copy of the automatic binding information is stored on a remote host called the DHCP database agent. The bindings are periodically written to the database agent. When the device reloads, the bindings are read from the database agent to the DHCP database in the DHCP server.

Note	We strongly recommend that you use database agents. However, Cisco DHCP server can function even without database agents.

Some DHCP clients send a client identifier (DHCP option 61) in the DHCP packet. To configure manual bindings for such clients, you must enter the client-identifier command with the hexadecimal values that identify the DHCP client. To configure manual bindings for clients that do not send a client identifier option, you must enter the hardware-address DHCP pool configuration command with the hexadecimal hardware address of the client.

Depending on your release, the DHCP server sends infinite lease time to the clients for which manual bindings are configured.

Depending on your release, the DHCP server sends lease time that is configured using the lease command to clients for which manual bindings are configured.

Note	You cannot configure manual bindings within the same pool that is configured with the network command in DHCP pool configuration mode. See the Configuring DHCP Address Pools section for information about DHCP address pools and the network command.

By default, the DHCP server pings a pool address twice before assigning a particular address to a requesting client. If the ping is unanswered, the DHCP server assumes (with a high probability) that the address is not in use and assigns the address to the requesting client.

By default, the DHCP server waits for 2 seconds before timing out a ping packet.

You can configure the DHCP server to ignore and not reply to any BOOTP requests that the server receives. This functionality is beneficial when there is a mix of BOOTP and DHCP clients in a network segment and there is a BOOTP server and a Cisco DHCP server servicing the network segment. The BOOTP server is configured with static bindings for the BOOTP clients and the BOOTP clients must obtain their addresses from the BOOTP server. However, DHCP servers can also respond to BOOTP requests and the DHCP server may offer an address that causes the BOOTP clients to boot with the address from the DHCP server, instead of the address from the BOOTP server. Configuring the DHCP server to ignore BOOTP requests ensures that the BOOTP clients will receive address information from the BOOTP server and will not accept an address from a DHCP server.

Cisco software can forward these ignored BOOTP request packets to another DHCP server if the ip helper-address command is configured on the incoming interface.

This task enables static routes to be assigned using a DHCP default gateway as the next-hop device. This behavior was not possible before the introduction of this feature because the gateway IP address is not known until after the DHCP address assignment. You cannot configure a static route with the CLI without knowing that DHCP-supplied address.

The static routes are updated in the routing table when the default gateway is assigned by the DHCP server. The routes remain in the routing table until the DHCP lease expires and then the routes are removed.

When a DHCP client releases an address, the corresponding static route (the route configured using the ip route command) is automatically removed from the routing table. If the DHCP router option (option 3 of the DHCP packet) changes during the client renewal, the DHCP default gateway changes to the new IP address supplied after the renewal.

This feature is particularly useful for VPN deployments such as Dynamic Multipoint VPNs (DMVPNs). This feature is useful when a nonphysical interface, such as a multipoint generic routing encapsulation (mGRE) tunnel, is configured on a device and certain traffic must be excluded from entering the tunnel interface.

Perform this task to clear DHCP server variables:

The following example shows how to store bindings on host 172.16.4.253. The file transfer protocol is FTP. The server waits for 2 minutes (120 seconds) before performing database changes.

ip dhcp database ftp://user:password@172.16.4.253/router-dhcp write-delay 120

In the following example, server A and server B service the subnet 10.0.20.0/24. If the subnet is split equally between the two servers, server A is configured to allocate IP addresses 10.0.20.1 to 10.0.20.125 and server B is configured to allocate IP addresses 10.0.20.126 to 10.0.20.254.

Server A

ip dhcp excluded-address 10.0.20.126 10.0.20.255
!
ip dhcp pool A
 network 10.0.20.0 255.255.255.0

Server B

ip dhcp excluded-address 10.0.20.0 10.0.20.125
!
ip dhcp pool B
 network 10.0.20.0 255.255.255.0

In the following example, three DHCP address pools are created: one in network 172.16.0.0, one in subnetwork 172.16.1.0, and one in subnetwork 172.16.2.0. Attributes from network 172.16.0.0—such as the domain name, Domain Name System (DNS) server, (Network Basic Input/Output System) NetBIOS name server, and NetBIOS node type—are inherited in subnetworks 172.16.1.0 and 172.16.2.0. In each pool, clients are granted 30-day leases and all addresses in each subnetwork, except the excluded addresses, are available to the DHCP server for assigning to clients. The table below lists the IP addresses for the devices in three DHCP address pools.

ip dhcp database ftp://user:password@172.16.4.253/router-dhcp write-delay 120
ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.1.100 172.16.1.103 
ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.2.100 172.16.2.103
!
ip dhcp pool 0
 network 172.16.0.0 /16
 domain-name cisco.com
 dns-server 172.16.1.102 172.16.2.102
 netbios-name-server 172.16.1.103 172.16.2.103 
 netbios-node-type h-node
!
ip dhcp pool 1
 network 172.16.1.0 /24
 default-router 172.16.1.100 172.16.1.101 
 lease 30 
!
ip dhcp pool 2
 network 172.16.2.0 /24
 default-router 172.16.2.100 172.16.2.101 
 lease 30

Multiple disjoint subnets in a DHCP pool can be used in any of the following network topologies:

• IP address pooling—The DHCP client and server reside on the same subnet.
• DHCP relay—The DHCP client and DHCP server communicate through a DHCP relay agent where the relay interface is configured with secondary IP addresses.
• Hierarchical DHCP—The DHCP server is configured as the DHCP subnet allocation server. The DHCP client and DHCP subnet allocation server communicate through an on-demand address pool (ODAP) router.

In the following example, one DHCP address pool named pool3 is created; the primary subnet is 172.16.0.0/16, one secondary subnet is 172.16.1.0/24, and the other secondary subnet is 172.16.2.0/24.

• When IP addresses in the primary subnet are exhausted, the DHCP server inspects the secondary subnets in the order in which the subnets were added to the pool.
• When the DHCP server allocates an IP address from the secondary subnet 172.16.1.0/24, the server uses the subnet-specific default device list that consists of IP addresses 172.16.1.100 and 172.16.1.101. However, when the DHCP server allocates an IP address from the subnet 172.16.2.0/24, the server uses the pool-wide list that consists of the four IP addresses from 172.16.0.100 to 172.16.0.103.
• Other attributes from the primary subnet 172.16.0.0/16—such as the domain name, DNS server, NetBIOS name server, and NetBIOS node type—are inherited in both the secondary subnets.
• DHCP clients are granted 30-day leases on IP addresses in the pool. All addresses in each subnet, except the excluded addresses, are available to the DHCP server for assigning to clients.

The table below lists the IP addresses for the devices in the DHCP address pool that consists of three disjoint subnets.

ip dhcp database ftp://user:password@172.16.4.253/router-dhcp write-delay 120
ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.0.100 172.16.1.103 
ip dhcp excluded-address 172.16.1.100 172.16.1.101 
!
ip dhcp pool pool3
 network 172.16.0.0 /16
 default-router 172.16.0.100 172.16.2.101 172.16.0.102 172.16.0.103
 domain-name cisco.com
 dns-server 172.16.1.102 172.16.2.102
 netbios-name-server 172.16.1.103 172.16.2.103 
 netbios-node-type h-node
 lease 30 
!
 network 172.16.1.0 /24 secondary 
  override default-router 172.16.1.100 172.16.1.101 
  end 
!
 network 172.16.2.0 /24 secondary 

The following example shows how to create a manual binding for a client named example1.abc.com that sends a client identifier in the DHCP packet. The MAC address of the client is 02c7.f800.0422 and the IP address of the client is 172.16.2.254.

ip dhcp pool pool1 
 host 172.16.2.254 
 client-identifier  01b7.0813.8811.66
 client-name example1

The following example shows how to create a manual binding for a client named example2.abc.com that does not send a client identifier in the DHCP packet. The MAC address of the client is 02c7.f800.0422 and the IP address of the client is 172.16.2.253.

ip dhcp pool pool2 
 host 172.16.2.253 
 hardware-address 02c7.f800.0422 ethernet
 client-name example1

Because attributes are inherited, the two preceding configurations are equivalent to the following:

ip dhcp pool pool1 
 host 172.16.2.254 255.255.255.0 
 hardware-address 02c7.f800.0422 ieee802
 client-name client1
 default-router 172.16.2.100 172.16.2.101 
 domain-name abc.com
 dns-server 172.16.1.102 172.16.2.102
 netbios-name-server 172.16.1.103 172.16.2.103
 netbios-node-type h-node

The following example shows how to restart the DHCP server, configure the pool, and specify the URL where the static mapping text file is stored:

no service dhcp
service dhcp
ip dhcp pool abcpool
origin file tftp://10.1.0.1/staticfilename

Note

The static mapping text file can be copied to flash memory on the device and served by the TFTP process of the device. In this case, the IP address in the original file line must be an address owned by the device and one additional line of configuration is required on the device:tftp-server flash static-filename.

The following example shows two DHCP pools that are configured on the device and that the device’s DHCP server is configured to ignore all received BOOTP requests. If a BOOTP request is received from subnet 10.0.18.0/24, the request will be dropped by the device (because the ip helper-address command is not configured). If there is a BOOTP request from subnet 192.168.1.0/24, the request will be forwarded to 172.16.1.1 via the ip helper-address command.

version 12.2
service timestamps debug uptime
service timestamps log uptime
no service password-encryption
!
hostname Router 
!
ip subnet-zero
!
ip dhcp bootp ignore
!
ip dhcp pool ABC
   network 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0
   default-router 192.168.1.3 
   lease 2
!
ip dhcp pool DEF
   network 10.0.18.0 255.255.255.0
!
ip cef
!
interface FastEthernet0/0
 no ip address
 shutdown
 duplex half
!
interface Ethernet1/0
 ip address 10.0.18.68 255.255.255.0
 duplex half
!
interface Ethernet1/1
 ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
 ip helper-address 172.16.1.1
 duplex half
!
interface Ethernet1/2
 shutdown
 duplex half
!
interface Ethernet1/3
 no ip address
 shutdown
 duplex half
!
interface FastEthernet2/0
 no ip address
 shutdown
 duplex half
!
ip route 172.16.1.1 255.255.255.255 e1/0 
no ip http server
no ip pim bidir-enable
!
call rsvp-sync
!
mgcp profile default
!
dial-peer cor custom
!
gatekeeper
 shutdown
!
line con 0
line aux 0
line vty 0 4
!
end

The following example shows how to configure a remote and central server to support the importing of DHCP options. The central server is configured to automatically update DHCP options, such as DNS and WINS addresses, within the DHCP pools. In response to a DHCP request from a local client behind CPE equipment, the remote server can request or “import” these option parameters from the centralized server. See the figure below for a diagram of the network topology.

Figure 1. DHCP Example Network Topology

Central Device

!do not assign this range to DHCP clients
ip dhcp-excluded address 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.5
!
ip dhcp pool central
! Specifies network number and mask for DHCP clients
 network 10.0.0.0 255.255.255.0
! Specifies the domain name for the client
 domain-name central
! Specifies DNS server that will respond to DHCP clients when they need to correlate host ! name to ip address
 dns-server 10.0.0.2
!Specifies the NETBIOS WINS server
 netbios-name-server 10.0.0.2 
!
interface FastEthernet0/0
 ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0
 duplex auto
 speed auto

Remote Device

ip dhcp pool client
! Imports DHCP option parameters into DHCP server database
 import all
 network 172.16.2.254 255.255.255.0
!
interface FastEthernet0/0
 ip address dhcp
 duplex auto
 speed auto

This example shows how to configure two DHCP classes. CLASS1 defines the group of DHCP clients whose address requests contain the relay agent information option with the specified hexadecimal values. CLASS2 defines the group of DHCP clients whose address requests contain the configured relay agent information suboptions. CLASS3 has no pattern configured and is treated as a “match to any” class. This type of class is useful for specifying a “default” class.

The subnet of pool ABC has been divided into three ranges without further subnetting the 10.0.20.0/24 subnet. If there is a DHCP Discover message from the 10.0.20.0/24 subnet with option 82 matching that of class CLASS1, an available address in the range from 10.0.20.1 to 10.0.20.100 will be allocated. If there is no free address in CLASS1’s address range, the DHCP Discover message will be matched against CLASS2, and so on.

Therefore, each class in the DHCP pool will be examined for a match in the order configured by the user. In pool ABC, the order of matching is CLASS1, CLASS2, and finally CLASS3. In pool DEF, class CLASS2 does not have any address range configured. By default, the address range for a particular class is the pool’s entire subnets. Therefore, clients matching CLASS2 may be allocated addresses from 10.0.20.1 to 10.0.20.254.

Multiple pools can be configured with the same class, eliminating the need to configure the same patterns in multiple pools. For example, there may be a need to specify that one or more pools must be used only to service a particular class of devices (for example, cable modems and IP phones).

! Defines the DHCP classes and relay information patterns
ip dhcp class CLASS1 
 relay agent information 
  relay-information hex 01030a0b0c02050000000123 
  relay-information hex 01030a0b0c02* 
  relay-information hex 01030a0b0c02050000000000 bitmask 0000000000000000000000FF 
ip dhcp class CLASS2 
 relay agent information 
  relay-information hex 01040102030402020102 
  relay-information hex 01040101030402020102 
ip dhcp class CLASS3 
 relay agent information 
! Associates the DHCP pool with DHCP classes 
ip dhcp pool ABC 
 network 10.0.20.0 255.255.255.0 
 class CLASS1 
  address range 10.0.20.1 10.0.20.100 
class CLASS2 
  address range 10.0.20.101 10.0.20.200 
 class CLASS3 
  address range 10.0.20.201 10.0.20.254 
ip dhcp pool DEF 
 network 172.64.2.2 255.255.255.0 
 class CLASS1 
  address range 172.64.2.3 172.64.2.10 
 class CLASS2

The following example shows how to configure two Ethernet interfaces to obtain the next-hop device IP address from the DHCP server:

ip route 10.10.10.0 255.255.255.0 dhcp 200 
ip route 10.10.20.1 255.255.255.255 ethernet 1 dhcp