DHCP Resources

[josh0227]

We are currently running DHCP from a netgear router to hand out addresses to 30 machines. I would like to install DHCP on our 2000 server, however I have heard that it takes up a lot of resources. Is this true and if so, what is the percentage and will it effect network performance?

Thanks.

 

[kmcferrin]

No, DHCP doesn't take a lot of resources to run on a Windows 2000 server. If it can run on a device as low-powered as your router, then it can defintiely run on a server without problems.

All the DHCP service does is keep a database of IP addresses and associated settings that have been allocated for distribution, then keeps track of which PC was allocated which IP. It typically only does anything when a PC boots onto the network and broadcasts a request for an IP address. The amount of processing overhead involved in this is miniscule, and since you're already running DHCP on your network then it's not going to affect network performance either.

Whoever told you that it takes up a lot of resources should be taken out back and smacked around.

 

[josh0227]

Oh, well the guy here before me has been in IT for years. He told me that it takes up something like 18% of the server resources. I guess that was a bunch of crap.

 

[kmcferrin]

It might if it were misconfigured or there was a bug or something, but for the most part it shouldn't be a problem. As an example, I have a server that is a domain controller, DNS server, DHCP server, file server and print server for about 40 users at a site. I'm connected right now and the CPU utilization is running between 1-5%. Of course it spikes to 40 or 50 when someone sends a print job, but that's to be expected. And this server isn't very beefy either, it's just a 2.53 GHz Pentium IV with 1 GB of RAM (using about half that) and a pair of mirrored IDE drives. It's more than adequate.