As Internet technologies continue moving ever closer to center stage as the key elements of the corporate NOS platform, the need for a dynamic name-registration service is proving to be more pressing. This is particularly true as technologies such as DHCP become increasingly popular for automated address management. When addresses change daily, the host names linked to those addresses also must be changed daily if the names are to be relevant. Dynamic DNS solves this problem, but does so with extreme complexity.

DHCP is supported in most networking devices and software--from ISDN routers to firewalls to every mainstream operating system on the market--and networks of all sizes are using DHCP to help manage their infrastructure equipment. But despite a broad level of support for the protocol, surprisingly few DHCP installations go beyond its most basic features. This article will provide some tips and techniques for using DHCP to maximize network automation.

By all measures, 1997 was a very good year for the computer networking industry. New and exciting technologies gave birth to strong products, which in turn helped many a bottom line. There were also a fair number of loser technologies, products, and companies, as well as the as-yet-to-be-decided contenders who offer strong possibilities, but who have failed to execute in one form or another.

Managing large Domain Name Service (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) servers is a difficult and time-consuming task. Trying to keep these two services integrated together is even harder. Cisco's DNS/DHCP Manager provides a single interface to these separate services, making your network management chores considerably easier.

For a detailed description of DHCP, we suggest that you download RFC 1541 from any of the Internet draft repository sites. A good place to start is ds.internic.net, available via FTP, Gopher and HTTP. For a less detailed description, read on.

As we discovered in our testing, the various implementations are all somewhat off the mark, and there is still plenty of room for improvement. However, most of the implementations do interoperate successfully, so you should at least consider deploying the technology if not the specific products.

While DHCP offers relief from having to manually configure the TCP/IP setup on each of your PCs, it only shifts the management tasks away from the clients and onto a DHCP server. You still have to manage all of the addresses (or at least the address pools), and if the server isn't up to snuff, you'll find that it doesn't help you solve address management problems. While you may have had a hard-to-manage-but-efficient network before, choosing the wrong DHCP server could land you in an easy-to-manage, mediocre mush.