DHCP and IP Addressing - What are your preferences?

[drebo]

So, as far as DHCP and IP Addressing goes, there's basically two ways to accomodate your dynamic and static hosts.

1) DHCP for the entire subnet, with exclusions in the scope and statically assigned IP addresses on the devices

2) DHCP for the entire subnet, with reservations for your hosts that need a static IP(my preferred)

Now, obviously this is for a smaller LAN with a single subnet and only a few devices needing static IP address (printers, servers, etc). My preferred is number 2, though I see it done the other way quite a bit as well.

I'm just curious how other people do it. So...let me know.

 

[spidey07]

Never statically assign an address to a device except for network equipment and servers. Everything else that needs to always have the same address is dhcp reservations.

On server networks you generally don't run DHCP or have the scope setup anyway.

 

[jlazzaro]

i prefer #1 as we never run DHCP on any of the server segments.

 

[imported_snikt]

When we were still on our NT domain we had our exclusions for our scopes. After we moved to AD and got our Cisco hardware we started using reservations for whichever devices required a static (except our servers). I prefer our new way of using reservations.

 

[JackMDS]

For small peer-to-peer.

DHCP range equal to number of devices plus few spares.

Router that can do reservation within the scope of the DHCP.

All computers and devices that are always part of the Network reserved.

Special Shared Devices like, Network Printers, NAS', additional Access Points etc. Static IPs out of the DHCP range.

 

[RebateMonger]

Long-term reservations for "static" devices like printers are ideal. That way, all your "static" IP assignments are in one place to see.

 

[kevnich2]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Long-term reservations for "static" devices like printers are ideal. That way, all your "static" IP assignments are in one place to see.

This is my reasoning for using reservations rather than statically assigning the IP address. You can see all of your reserved addresses in one spot. Yes, you can document it but then it's more paperwork you have to look up and paperwork can be lost. Go with option 2, especially if it's a larger network.

 

[RebateMonger]

I suppose you could even set DHCP reservations for all the servers, even though the servers aren't using DHCP. I wouldn't hurt anything, and gives the complete IP documentation all on one page.

 

[Brovane]

We do #1 .

 

[JackBurton]

I prefer reservations.

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Long-term reservations for "static" devices like printers are ideal. That way, all your "static" IP assignments are in one place to see.

We do the same for printers & WAPs, although our servers are statically assigned. Not sure why.. it's been like that for a while, but in the next couple months we'll be virtualizing many of them anyway, so no need to change them right now. Once the virtualization is done, the remaining non-virted boxes probably will get set with reservations.