DHCP Relay

In This Section:

BOOTP/DHCP Relay extends Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) operations across multiple hops in a routed network. In standard BOOTP, all interfaces on a LAN are loaded from a single configuration server on the LAN. BOOTP Relay allows configuration requests to be forwarded to, and serviced from, configuration servers outside the LAN.

BOOTP/DHCP Relay offers these advantages over standard BOOTP/DHCP:

Redundancy: Configure an interface on the Check Point system to relay client configuration requests to all the listed servers simultaneously.
Load Balancing: Configure multiple interfaces on the Check Point system to relay client configuration requests to different servers.
Management: Centrally manage client configurations in large enterprise environments across multiple LANs.

The Gaia implementation of BOOTP Relay is compliant with RFC 951, RFC 1542, and RFC 2131. BOOTP Relay supports Ethernet and IEEE 802 LANs with canonical MAC byte ordering, on clients that specify Bootp htype=1: 802.3 and FDDI.

When an interface configured for BOOTP Relay receives a boot request, it forwards the request to all the servers in its server list. It does this after waiting a specified length of time for a local server to answer the boot request. If a primary IP is specified, it stamps the request with that address. Otherwise, it stamps the request with the lowest numeric IP address specified for the interface.