DHCP overview

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) provides a framework to assign configuration information to network devices.

DHCP uses the client/server model.

Figure 14: A typical DHCP application

A DHCP client can obtain an IP address and other configuration parameters from a DHCP server on another subnet via a DHCP relay agent. For more information about the DHCP relay agent, see "Configuring DHCP relay agent."