Subject: handling multiple dhcp servers under windows

From: Ned <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 23:34:48 +1100

hey everyone,

this may seem like an odd situation but after connecting my cable modem to 
our ethernet hub we end up with effectively 2 dhcp servers on the network. 
I would like each of the clients to be able to access the internet either 
by connecting directly to the cable modem (through the hub with a login 
client) or through the server which is already logged in.

The most obvious difficult arises from there being more than one DHCP 
server on the network - how does the Windows 2000 client choose which one 
to obtain an IP address from? And is it possible to make one of the dhcp 
servers the "default" one to the clients, given that I cannot control the 
dhcp server which is behind the cable modem. I have tried unplugging the 
server and when I refresh my IP, I get one from the cable modem but if the 
NT4 server and cable modem are both plugged in at the same time and I 
refresh the IP again, I always get an IP from the cable modem. I have even 
tried modifying every mention of the internal DHCP server to the cable 
modem dhcp server in the registry (under the TCP/IP service) but it still 
reverts to the internal DHCP server.

Perhaps a slightly trickier problem is that of file sharing. The NT4 server 
serves a multitude of files to which access is required regardless of 
whether the client is connected to the internet through the server or 
through the cable modem. Since my local IPs are on a different subnet to 
the IPs handed out by the cable mdoem dhcp server, the traditional 
"internal" file server is not accessible while connected through the cable 
modem (both are accessible from an internal IP). I have noticed that it's 
possible to assign a network card more than one IP address but for me, the 
only solution would be to use two network cards (which I do and don't like) 
each connected to the different subnets. Is it possible to have one network 
card not only with two IPs on different subnets, but also one obtained via 
DHCP and one assigned? This feature doesn't seem readily available under 
NT4 and I'm wondering why.

any help is appreciated.

cheers,

Ned