Using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

The reason you can just plug your computer's Ethernet cable into a LAN jack at work, a hotel, or a DSL router in your home and immediately be up on the Internet is typically because of DHCP. Linux and Windows systems are set up by default to look for a DHCP server when they boot up. If your ISP or support staff has configured DHCP, you can be on the Internet faster than you can open your browser.

Setting up a DHCP server enables you to centrally manage the addresses and other network information for client computers on your private network. With DHCP configured on your network, a client computer can simply indicate that it wants to use DHCP and the DHCP server can provide its IP address, network mask, DNS server, NetBIOS server, router (gateway), and other information needed to get up and running on the network. With DHCP, you can greatly simplify the initial network configuration that each client computer on your network needs to do. Later, as your network evolves, you can easily update that information, having changes automatically picked up by clients when they restart their network interfaces.

Note 

Although this chapter focuses on the configuration of DHCP client and server services on your Fedora and RHEL systems, your Fedora or RHEL DHCP client can use the services of other network devices. For example, you might have a Cisco routing swtich, a DSL/Cable device with DHCP services, or even a Windows-based DHCP server. DHCP clients for Fedora and RHEL will not have trouble working with any standards-compliant DHCP server.

To configure the DHCP server described in this chapter, you need to have the dhcp package installed ( yum install dhcp ).