What are two requirements for a valid IP address in a Windows Server 2003 environment?
2.
How does TCP/IP know whether packets are local to a network or need to be forwarded to another network?
3.
Why should a company choose to use DHCP over manually assigning IP addresses?
4.
Why is it important to have a DNS server's IP address for a client computer in a Windows Server 2003 network?
5.
What is the disadvantage of using VLSM to break up IP address ranges?
Answers to Review Questions
1.
Two minimum requirements for a valid IP address in a Windows Server 2003 environment are a valid IP address and a subnet mask. With that having been said, you will typically always also configure a default gateway as well. For more information, see the section "Configuring TCP/IP."
2.
The subnet mask defines the network ID portion of the IP address. If the destination of the packet has a different network ID, the packet is forwarded to the gateway. For more information, see the section "Subnets and Subnet Masks."
3.
DHCP allows the dynamic assignment of IP addresses and provides greater flexibility in address management than manually assigning IP addresses. For example, a client computer using DHCP does not have a statically assigned IP address and can be moved to another network segment without the TCP/IP configuration needing to be manually modified. For more information, see the section "Configuring TCP/IP."
4.
A DNS server provides the capability of resolving hostnames to IP addresses. Without a DNS server, you would need to know the actual IP address of the target computer. Also, with Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and DHCP, DNS can be dynamically updated. For more information, see the section "Configuring TCP/IP."
5.
Although VLSM can be used to break up larger blocks of IP addresses into smaller, more customizable (and manageable) blocks, it causes you to lose usable IP addresses in the process. For example, when applying the VLSM 192.168.211.0/26, you would create four subnets, each with 62 usable addresses, for a total of 248 usable addresses. In this case, you would lose seven addresses. For more information, see the section "Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM)."
