DHCP Relay Agent

The Windows 2000 Router is an RFC 1542–compliant Boot Protocol (BOOTP) relay agent relaying Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) messages between DHCP clients and DHCP servers on different IP networks. In this role, the Windows 2000 Router functions as the DHCP Relay Agent. Without a DHCP Relay Agent, a DHCP server is required on every subnet that contains DHCP clients. The DHCP Relay Agent takes broadcasted DHCP messages from DHCP clients and forwards them to the IP addresses of DHCP servers. The responses from the DHCP server are sent to the IP address of the DHCP Relay Agent, which then forwards them to the DHCP client.

For more information about DHCP and its implementation in Windows 2000, see "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol" in the Microsoft ® Windows ®  2000 Server Resource Kit TCP/IP Core Networking Guide .