Determining Routers for DHCP Clients

Clients use routers for any network communication beyond their local network, and they must know the IP addresses of these routers in order to use them.

During DHCP server configuration, you must provide the IP address of a router the clients can use or, if you use DHCP Manager, you can specify that clients should find routers themselves by using the router discovery protocol.

If clients on your network support router discovery, you should use router discovery protocol instead of specifying the IP address, even if there is only one router. Discovery enables a client to adapt easily to router changes in the network. For example, if a router fails and is replaced by one 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.