Cisco DHCP configuration

This configuration will be applied to Cisco 1941 with EHWIC-3G-HSPA+7 card and Light Weigh Access Point.

Basic DHCP config

Configure Cisco router as DHCP SERVER

configure terminal
 service dhcp
 ip dhcp pool LMA-POOL
  network 192.168.100.0 255.255.255.0
  default-router 192.168.100.254
  dns-server 192.168.100.254 8.8.8.8
  domain-name lma.gateway
  lease 0 8 '<--- 8 hrs lease -- number represents: Days Hours Minutes ---'
ip dhcp excluded-address 192.168.100.1 192.168.100.10
ip dhcp excluded-address 192.168.100.240 192.168.100.255

Cisco router interface configured to obtain an IP Address from DHCP server

configure terminal
r1-basic(config)#int gi 0/0
r1-basic(config-if)#ip address dhcp
r1-basic(config-if)#no shutdown
r1-basic(config-if)#end

once ip is assigned you will see

*Sep  1 22:08:50.003: %DHCP-6-ADDRESS_ASSIGN: Interface GigabitEthernet0/0 assigned DHCP address 192.168.1.66, mask 255.255.255.0, hostname r1-basicchanged state to up

Clear DHCP binding will clear the current assignment then resetting a client interface will trigger to re negotiate IP address

R1#clear ip dhcp binding ?
 *        Clear all automatic bindings
 A.B.C.D  Clear a specific binding
 vrf      DHCP vrf bindings

DHCP IP bindings

This is an example of manual IP binding, dhcp POOL need to be created per ip address binding.

ip dhcp pool AP1
 host 10.0.99.1 255.255.255.128
 client-identifier 017c.69f6.e1d8.7d
 ! client-name did not work for me, it did not assign 'ap1' hostname to a client/AP
 client-name ap1

If you configure a Cisco router as a DHCP client, you'll notice that it uses weird client-id in its DHCP requests (assuming you care about client IDs on the DHCP server). Instead of using the interface MAC address as the client ID (as most workstations do), the client ID is the string 'cisco-dotted.mac.ascii-ifname' where the dotted.mac.ascii is the interface MAC address in ascii and the ifname is the short interface name.

+-----------+                       +-------------+
|Router     | Gi0/1/0<--------->Gi0 | Access point|
|DHCP server|                  /    +-------------+
+-----------+                 /
                       MAC address 
client-identifier 017c.69f6.e1d8.7d

debug dhcp detail

Note that if you have client-id cc05.12bc.0000 on your client ; on your server, you need to use client-id 01cc.0512.bc00.00. So there's a 01 prefix to add on the server where 01 represents the Ethernet media type.

By default, DHCP implementations typically employ the client's MAC address for this purpose, but the DHCP protocol allows other options as well. In any case, in order for DHCP to function, we must be certain that no other client is using the client ID we choose, and we must be sure the DHCP server will accept it. What is termed the Client ID for the purposes of the DHCP protocol is whatever is used by the protocol to identify the client computer.

A client identifier (DHCP option 61) can be a hexadecimal or an ASCII value. By default, the client identifier is an ASCII value. That is what happens if we just use ip address dhcp without any options. We can override the default by using ip address dhcp client-id <interface> command, and then it will use the hexadecimal MAC address of the named interface as the client identifier.

There is also DHCP option 12 that is used to send the hostname to the Server. By default option 12 also will be sent with the configured hostname as the value, but we can change it with ip address dhcp hostname host-name.

Binding configured can be preview

R1#sh ip dhcp binding
Bindings from all pools not associated with VRF:
IP address          Client-ID/              Lease expiration        Type
                    Hardware address/
                    User name
10.0.99.1           017c.69f6.e1d8.7d       Infinite                Manual
10.0.99.2           017c.69f6.e1d9.18       Infinite                Manual
10.0.99.3           017c.69f6.e1d9.78       Infinite                Manual

References

• Configuring the Cisco IOS DHCP Server first published on May 2, 2005, and last updated on June 28, 2007.