Scopes, Pools, and Reservations
Understand how admins control which addresses get assigned.
Controlling Address Handout
DHCP would be chaos if it gave out random addresses with no rules. Administrators control it using three related ideas: scopes, pools, and reservations. Together they decide which addresses a network can use, which are free to lease, and which devices always get the same address. This lesson shows how each works and why they keep large networks organized and predictable.
What a Scope Is
A scope is the full range of addresses a DHCP server manages for one subnet, plus the settings that go with them. For example, a scope might cover 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.254 with a matching mask, gateway, and DNS. The scope defines the boundaries of what DHCP can hand out on that network. A server can hold several scopes, one per subnet it serves.
All lessons in this course
- What DHCP Hands Out
- The DORA Lease Process
- Scopes, Pools, and Reservations
- When Automatic Addressing Fails