DHCP Revealed

Basically in this Internet era, many people already understand the term IP which stands for Internet Protocol. When someone said IP address means the magical number in format like 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1

Every computer that connect to network either Local Area Network (LAN) or the Internet require an IP address assigned to it. Just like everyone has a name. So computer also need a name but computer do not understand words, they only understand numbers. Therefore IP address is their name and given a name to them, information could pass easily without being confused. For example, an document without intended recipient and sender name it would end up nowhere. With IP address added to the document, it become more meaningful because computer able to recognize the document is for who and which computer it come from.

There is so many computers around the world. Are you going to give each computer an IP address whenever they connect to the Internet? Let's scale down to LAN first. Imagine you have 20 computers inside an organization. Would you get fed up if you are required to give an IP address to each of this computer? What about expansion where you have to get more computers in and start giving more IP address. What about visitor in your company want to do a presentation which require him to connect to the Internet and you need to tamper with the visitor's computer settings. Making life difficult isn't it?

So there is this one little technology called DHCP which stand for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Its main function is to assign IP address automatically from a table of available IP address. Make your life easier by having this DHCP thingy isn't it? Better than running around the whole organization to give each PC an IP address.

Now DHCP is quite standard and you could find it in most router in this world. Take mine Levelone router for example. Screenshot below:


You can click the image above to enlarge it.

After I login into my router. I can enable the DHCP server and specify range of IP address available for assignment. So you won't need to scare that it would conflict with your server IP address. You can set your server IP address out of the range you have set for DHCP server. Save the configuration and you are done.

However not all router have the same web interface. So you need to be an explorer to find out a bit about your router. Do not worry. There is a reset button behind each router in case you screw up. Once you reset, everything back to default settings and you can retry again to set DHCP. After you have done it, you will feel proud that you learn something new.

To be in the safe side please read your router manual if there is one. You will definitely find a section teaching you how to setup DHCP. You can also save a copy of your configuration before you tweak the DHCP. When something happen, you can restore back your configuration. Simple?