This section describes how to identify your IP addresses, how to subnet your addresses, what to do with addresses assigned by other sources, and how to restrict address assignments to clients.
If you have been using a previous version of Novell DHCP, another vendor's product, or another method of tracking your IP address information, information about your addresses should be close at hand. We recommend verifying the accuracy of your IP address records by performing a site audit to prevent communication problems.
If you are unsure of the range of your IP addresses, we recommend contacting your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or checking other records you have on file.
One of the more difficult configuration tasks concerns configuring your routers if you have multiple subnets. Each might require one or more subnets, depending on your router configuration. Create a Subnet object for each LAN segment that requires dynamic IP address assignment.
Your site might have devices, such as servers and printers, that have addresses assigned by means other than DHCP. Assign addresses to these devices manually.
You also must provide these devices with any specific configuration information they might require. If you want to provide configuration using DHCP, the device must be capable of acting as a DHCP client. You can assign a static address to a device and still provide configuration information using DHCP.
To ensure that the assigned addresses are not used by DHCP, use the DNS/DHCP Management Utility to exclude the addresses from assignment. You can use the utility to exclude single addresses or entire ranges from address assignment.
IP addresses are represented by IP Address objects under Subnet container objects. Novell DNS/DHCP Services stores address information and attributes of these objects, such as hostnames, hardware addresses, the time when an address lease will expire, and fully qualified domain names (FQDNs), in eDirectory. You can view this information using the DNS/DHCP Management Utility.
By using static address assignment, you can ensure that a device, capable of acting as a BOOTP or DHCP client, receives the same address from the DHCP server each time it is started. You can also explicitly exclude an address assignment to a device based on the device's hardware address. This is done by setting DHCP Global Preferences. To invoke the DHCP Global Preferences window, click DHCP Global Configuration > DHCP Global Preferences.