|
Issue 36, Spring 2006
by Linc Nesheim
 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is quite a mouthful if you’re not a computer expert. Even those experts shorten this term to “DHCP”.
What is it and why should you care? In short, DHCP is a way for your computer to get a flexible, yet individualized internet address – sort of like a telephone number – so you can talk to other computers on the internet. Without an internet address (often referred to as an IP address), your computer can’t perform many of the basic network communication tasks we all take for granted – email, file sharing, and web browsing for example. In the past, everyone on campus had a fixed and inflexible Internet address attached to their office computer. That address would work only at the office where your computer was located. If your department moved across campus or if you also used a laptop computer, new fixed addresses would have to be re-assigned by someone in Western’s Telecomm and Networking group.
You should care about DHCP, because most individual computers on campus will move from fixed Internet addresses to dynamically assigned DHCP Internet addresses before next fall. This will greatly reduce the staff time required to set up fixed IP addresses when you get a new computer – and will also greatly reduce the inconvenience and time of waiting for network addresses to be manually assigned by support staff. In practice, this change will be transparent to you. Your computer will simply begin to use DHCP to acquire a network address, rather than using the fixed one it used to have stored internally. You’ll notice the change more when you get a new computer or see a new colleague’s computer set up. Most new computers on campus will connect to the network ‘out-of-the-box’ rather than having to wait for technical staff to set up the network connection first. With the implementation of DHCP, this process of assigning an IP address is handled automatically by a DHCP server.
A large number of buildings on campus already have DHCP implemented (i.e. AB, AC, AE, BH, CA, CH, MC, PAC, SV, parts of CM, ES, and MH). The Telecomm and Networking group is working closely with ATUS toward make this technology ubiquitous across the entire WWU campus. When your departments’ offices are scheduled to be converted, you will be informed by your technical support staff as a courtesy. The process itself has been automated in order to allow the transition to occur without any direct involvement at your workstation or inconvenience to you. |
