DHCP, as we all know, is a broadcast protocol (shame on you if you don’t know that already !!) which normally works only on the same Layer 2 broadcast domain. Does this mean that you need to have your DHCP Server connected to the same network subnet as the DHCP clients? If this was the case it would not be flexible or economical at all. What if you have segmented your internal network into many different subnets and you have DHCP clients in all those subnets. Would this mean that you must have a DHCP server for every subnet? Fortunately, you don’t need to have this situation. With the Cisco “ip helper-address” command configured on the Layer3 interface which receives the client’s DHCP broadcast, you can transform the broadcast request into a unicast and send it to a centralized DHCP server which can be located to a different subnet in your network. The unicast DHCP request will be routed normally to the destination DHCP Server within the network, even if the server is far away from the DHCP client.

The DHCP server must have an appropriate IP Pool scope configured for the specific subnet from where the DHCP request came. Using this IP scope, the server will assign an appropriate IP address to the requesting client. For example, if the DHCP client subnet is 192.168.1.0/24, then the remote DHCP server must have an IP Pool configured to assign addresses within the range 192.168.1.0/24. The source DHCP client subnet is determined by the IP address assigned to the Layer3 interface which has the ip helper-address configured.

Let’s see an example scenario below with a configuration snapshot.

From the network diagram above, two DHCP client PCs are located behind Router A. Interface Fe0/0 of the router has IP address 192.168.1.1/24. The DHCP clients will start broadcasting DHCP requests in order to get their IP address information assigned from a server. By default, these DHCP broadcast requests will be confined within Switch A and will never reach any other subnet beyond Router A. By configuring an “ip helper-address 10.10.10.1” under interface Fe0/0 of Router A, we tell the router to turn the DHCP broadcast into a DHCP unicast and send it to destination DHCP server 10.10.10.1. The server will see that the DHCP request came from source subnet 192.168.1.0/24 and will therefore assign an appropriate IP address from a configured IP pool scope within the range 192.168.1.0.

Configuration on Router A

RouterA# conf t
RouterA(config)# interface fastethernet0/0
RouterA(config-if)# ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
RouterA(config-if)# ip helper-address 10.10.10.1

Some other important considerations for ip helper-address

By default, the ip helper-address command forwards also some other broadcast protocols in addition to the DHCP (BOOTP) protocol. It forwards by default the following eight UDP broadcast protocols:

• UDP 37 (Time protocol)
• UDP 49 (TACACS)
• UDP 53 (DNS)
• UDP 67 (DHCP Server)
• UDP 68 (DHCP Client)
• UDP 69 (TFTP)
• UDP 137 (NetBios)
• UDP 138 (NetBios Datagram service)

If you want to add more broadcast protocols to be forwarded, or even remove some of the default forwarded protocols, you can use the “ip forward-protocol” command under global config mode.

Example: Remove the NetBios protocols (137,138) from being forwarded by default, and add NTP protocol 123 to be forwarded by ip helper-address.

RouterA(config)# no ip forward-protocol udp 137
RouterA(config)# no ip forward-protocol udp 138
RouterA(config)# ip forward-protocol udp 123

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1. How to Configure DHCP on Cisco 851 or 871 Router
2. Some Basic CCNA Exam Preparation Topics Part I
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5. How to Configure a Cisco ASA 5510 Firewall – Basic Configuration Tutorial
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