Chapter 14: Examining DHCP

Whenever you first boot up your machine to start your day, your operating system (OS) moves through a series of events. One of those events is obtaining an internet protocol (IP) address. The protocol that's used to obtain your IP address is known as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). In this chapter, we'll begin by reviewing the purpose of DHCP. Then, we step through the DHCP process, which has four steps: discover, offer, request, and acknowledgment, also called the DORA process.

To familiarize ourselves with the elements that make the DHCP process possible, we'll take a closer look at the field values in a DHCP header. In addition, you'll get a better understanding of the role of the client and server during this process. We'll also take a look at DHCPv6, which is used to provide an IP address to the growing number of networks that are moving toward employing IPv6. We'll also review some of the security aspects...