A DHCP server provides many network-related parameters. The most common of these is an IP address and the network where the machine belongs, but it can also provide other information, such as DNS servers, WINS servers, NTP servers, and so on.

The Internet Software Consortium (also involved in developing ) is the main author of the DHCP server. The matching Debian package is isc-dhcp-server.

例 10.15. Excerpt of /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf

10.7.2. DHCP and DNS

A nice feature is the automated registering of DHCP clients in the DNS zone, so that each machine gets a significant name (rather than something impersonal such as machine-192-168-0-131.internal.falcot.com). Using this feature requires configuring the DNS server to accept updates to the internal.falcot.com DNS zone from the DHCP server, and configuring the latter to submit updates for each registration.

Beware! A zone that can be modified will be changed by bind, and the latter will overwrite its configuration files at regular intervals. Since this automated procedure produces files that are less human-readable than manually-written ones, the Falcot administrators handle the internal.falcot.com domain with a delegated DNS server; this means the falcot.com zone file stays firmly under their manual control.

The DHCP server configuration excerpt above already includes the directives required for DNS zone updates: they are the ddns-update-style interim; and lines in the block describing the subnet.