Determining Routers for DHCP Clients

Host systems use routers for any network communication beyond their local network. The hosts must know the IP addresses of these routers.

When you configure a DHCP server, you must provide DHCP clients with router addresses in one of two ways. One way is to provide specific IP addresses for routers. However, the preferred method is to specify that clients should find routers with the router discovery protocol.

If clients on your network can perform router discovery, you should use the router discovery protocol, even if there is only one router. Router discovery enables a client to adapt easily to router changes in the network. For example, suppose that a router fails and is replaced by a router with a new address. Clients can discover the new address automatically without having to obtain a new network configuration to get the new router address.