BOOTP/DHCP

DHCP is an extension of the BOOTP mechanism. In other words, DHCP uses BOOTP as its transport protocol. This behavior allows existing BOOTP clients to interoperate with DHCP servers without requiring any change to the clients' initialization software; the following table shows basic comparisons between these two protocols:

BOOTP/DHCP	BOOTP	DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol)
Meaning	Bootstrap Protocol	Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol extension of BOOTP
Year	1985	1993
UDP Server Port	67
UDP Client port	68
Services	IPv4 address assignment Obtaining IPv4 configuration parameter Limited number of client configuration parameters called vendor extensions	IP address assignment Leases Support legacy BOOTP functionality DHCP supports a larger and extensible set of client configuration parameters called options
RFC	RFC951	RFC 2131
Existence	Superseded by the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)	ACTIVE; RFCs keep coming to add more features and support different...