What is DHCP?

- [Instructor] Before you deploy any networking service role out on to your network, it's important that you have an understanding of what that networking service is going to provide and what kind of an effect it's going to have in your network environment. So here, I'd like to talk to you about the DHCP networking service, and really, you should know that DHCP is a server role in Windows Server 2019. And additionally, you'll see that it is a protocol, meaning it's not a Microsoft thing, it's a networking protocol in any environment.

So the letters DHCP actually stand for the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, and this is a protocol that's used to simplify the configuration of IP clients out on your network and reducing the complexity and amount of administrative work by using automatic IP configuration. So the real simplified definition is that it's a way of dynamically or automatically configuring IP addresses out on your clients.

So what are some of the benefits of using DHCP versus not using it? Well one real obvious benefit is when using DHCP, all your clients are going to get their IP addresses automatically, whereas without DHCP, you're going to have to go around to every single client and type in the information one by one. And that's a lot of work. And you have to know that beside the workload that's involved, the other advantage to having everything done dynamically is that you will get a consistent configuration every time.

And if there are any changes to the configuration, the clients will get that update automatically. Whereas again, if you're doing things without DHCP and you're typing everything in manually, you may have a typo at any given machine with just a simple slip of the keyboard. And then also, if there's a change to the configuration, there's always the possibility that a client won't get that change and then you'll have communication issues. So as you can see, the benefit of using DHCP is quite great.