DHCP Management Across a Diversified Network? 100
ET Admin writes "I work for a small Wireless ISP, where we are deploying new network hardware to allow for growth and contain broadcast traffic. All routing/switching equipment is Cisco. We use Linux stand-alone boxes and VMs (running on Win 2003 boxes). We have decided on a hybrid VLAN layout where we have certain VLANs limited by location, and other VLANs that are global across the network. And I want DHCP served across it all. Does anyone have experience with IPAM software that handles multiple DHCP servers? Our network is small so spending a couple grand is overkill at this point. Any recomendations to help me decide between serving DHCP from the Nix boxes, or from the Cisco gear? Knowing that a single DHCP server will handle from 100-500 hosts."
Re:Go IPV6 and leave DHCP in the dust (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I have the solution you need... (Score:1, Funny)
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=English+spelling+and+grammar+lessons [lmgtfy.com]
Re:Some VLAN's globally??? (Score:3, Funny)
I get the strong impression you might be in way over your head with less than 3 years experience. You're asking about implement technologies which you don't fully understand yet. The risk here is that you might get a solution that works, but it will be horribly insecure.
VLANS are layer 2. Subnetting is at the layer three level and normally coincidence with the layer 2 vlans you create (but not always). While you can have vlans spread across large regions, you defeat most of the benefits of using a vlan such as limiting broadcast domains and introduce some latency and timing issues. Cisco will tell you to keep the number of hops as small as possible. Adding 250 ms rtt between peers is an issue. Cisco has also had issues where vlans were not hard boundaries and you could get traffic to jump vlan boundaries by faking the 802.11q tags.
I think I understand what your trying to accomplish - a public IP that can move around a larger region and between wireless towers at will. I think a far better solution is along the lines of a secure VPN. That avoids a whole slew of security and performance issues associated with vlans and wireless. What's stopping a malicious person from coming up with a wireless subscriber module (what exactly is that, btw?) that adds whatever vlan tag they want and getting access to any subnet at will?
I also recommend using dhcp-helper and a handful of linux dhcp servers. That puts all the configuration in a central linux box and you don't have to muck with all the switches and routers for every little change.