Dhcp packet format – H3C Technologies H3C S3100 Series Switches User Manual

Page 500

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If the DHCP client fails to update its IP address lease when half of the lease time elapses, it will update

its IP address lease by broadcasting a DHCP-REQUEST packet to the DHCP servers again when

seven-eighths of the lease time elapses. The DHCP server performs the same operations as those

described above.

DHCP Packet Format

DHCP has eight types of packets. They have the same format, but the values of some fields in the

packets are different. The DHCP packet format is based on that of the BOOTP packets. The following

figure describes the packet format (the number in the brackets indicates the field length, in bytes):

Figure 1-2 DHCP packet format

The fields are described as follows:

z

op: Operation types of DHCP packets, 1 for request packets and 2 for response packets.

z

htype, hlen: Hardware address type and length of the DHCP client.

z

hops: Number of DHCP relay agents which a DHCP packet passes. For each DHCP relay agent

that the DHCP request packet passes, the field value increases by 1.

z

xid: Random number that the client selects when it initiates a request. The number is used to

identify an address-requesting process.

z

secs: Elapsed time after the DHCP client initiates a DHCP request.

z

flags: The first bit is the broadcast response flag bit, used to identify that the DHCP response

packet is a unicast (set to 0) or broadcast (set to 1). Other bits are reserved.

z

ciaddr: IP address of a DHCP client.

z

yiaddr: IP address that the DHCP server assigns to a client.

z

siaddr: IP address of the DHCP server.

z

giaddr: IP address of the first DHCP relay agent that the DHCP client passes after it sent the

request packet.

z

chaddr: Hardware address of the DHCP client.

z

sname: Name of the DHCP server.

z

file: Path and name of the boot configuration file that the DHCP server specifies for the DHCP

client.

z

option: Optional variable-length fields, including packet type, valid lease time, IP address of a DNS

server, and IP address of the WINS server.

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