DHCP

Improvements in Watchguard 11 quick setup wizard

One thing that Watchguard did well in there new software version was to include the option to enable DHCP as part of the quick setup wizard. Here is why this is great. Previously you would start up your watchguard in safe mode and hook your computer to it. You would then get an IP address from it (10.0.0.2) which you could use to start your quick setup wizard. You would then configure the internal interface with the IP you would actually want and the reboot the watchguard. However previously DHCP was always off meaning you would then have to go and manually configure an IP address on your machine to match what you configured the internal interface as if you wanted to continue. Needless to say this was a pain in the butt.

Windows server 2003: DHCP server rant

I am not sure if this has been fixed in Server 2008, maybe it has, but here is something i encountered in server 2003 that really made me mad. I was migrating a companies DHCP scope to a new server and this company had about 50 or so address reservations. So I was hoping there was a quick way to migrate this. I right clicked on reservations and noticed there was an option to export to comma delimited text file and I got all excited on the possiblity that I wouldn’t have to do this manually. THen I notice, while you can export the list there is no way that I could locate to import it.

Seriously Microsoft?!? You put in the functionality to export but not to import it back? Would it really have been so hard to input the maybe two lines of code to do this? I am curious about the rationale here of your developers, was this laziness or just plain stupidity?

Setting up DHCP relay on a Cisco router

This came up for me recently. Here are the commands to setup DHCP relay on a Cisco router, it’s super easy if you know what to do.

The interface you are configuring is the interface where the DHCP clients are located. The helper-address is the IP address of your DHCP server, in this case 10.10.0.5. Please note you will need to make this configuration change on EVERY interface that has clients that will need to access the DHCP server.

router2# conf t
router2(config)# int e0
router2(config-if)# ip helper-address 10.10.0.5

Cisco ASA - Remote Access VPN not getting reserved address from DHCP

I have configured a Cisco ASA 5520 in an environment where the remote users need to get statically assigned IP addresses. In the past this was done by using MAC address reservations on the DHCP server. In replacing their old firewall and putting in the ASA what I have found is that even though Remote Access VPN is configured to assign IP address’s via the DHCP server and even though that works (You can see the lease on the DHCP server), it does not give them the address that has been reserved by their MAC address. Does anyone know a solution to this? I would love to hear it.