Re: I never thought of this scenario

On 4/8/24 03:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

"With conflict detection enabled, the DHCP Server will ping the IP address it wants to grant a lease for to make sure no other computers are using that IP address. If the ping request receives a reply, the server will mark the IP as BAD_ADDRESS. If no response is received, the server will assign the IP address to the requesting client...."

This usually works well enough.  But it breaks down when the system using the IP the DHCP server is ping testing refuses to send echo reply responses to the ping.

(The DHCP client probes the IP address by sending gratuitous ARP packets)

I wonder if this happens after the client receives the DHCP OFFER from the server and before the client sends the DHCP REQUEST (for the offered IP).

Apparently the use of ping is preferred because a DHCP server can operate across various routed subdomains.

That doesn't surprise me.  But it does have limitations in some probably rare cases.
--
Grant. . . .