Howard, Very few people require an internal DNS server, but it's a common misconception that DHCP is hassle...it actually makes like significantly easier.
Without DHCP, one has to manually supply IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server IP addresses manually on each device. In your case I gather this is some 22 devices? Into each you manually entered all this data. If, in the future, you want to change any of these details, you have to go to all 22 devices and change it. Which DHCP, you buy a new device and turn it on and it will generally just work. Nearly all devices will come out of the box with DHCP enabled. Indeed, DHCP is part of the UPNP specification meaning that UPNP compliant devices *must* support DHCP by default. Otherwise it's not plug & play, it's plug, configure and pray. DHCP offers all of this convenience with almost no disadvantage whatsoever. If you want your device to have a reserved address that never changes, DHCP can do it. If you want to change the DNS on all network devices, DHCP can do it. Automatically. Without re-configuring the host machines. Generally on a network, only 2 types of devices need a static, hard coded IP address that isn't issued from a DHCP scope. The first are the DHCP servers themselves. The second are the routers or firewalls, usually this kind of hardware needs a static assignment. All other devices, workstations, server, printers etc. can be fully configured (and reconfigured) by DHCP. A fixed IP reservation can be used if you want this dynamically assigned address not to change, but assigning a hard coded address on the device is usually not best practice. The only time not using DHCP is advantageous is if your DHCP infrastructure is broken and refuses to issue address to new devices. In this case, the problem is that specific DHCP deployment, not the protocol itself. -- jaffacake Ben - eco conscious techie and author of Jaffa's Green Blog - http://www.jaffacake.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------ jaffacake's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3206 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48750 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
