The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network protocol that
sends network configuration information to computers (and other devices) on a
network. It allows a system administrator to manage an IP address range from
a central location and to maintain network parameters for all systems from
that same central point.
DHCP is an internet standard, published as RFC2131. Implementations exist for
many different platforms, covering clients and servers. As a standard
protocol there is no need to run the same implementation on clients and
servers. A Linux client will happily interact with -for example- a Microsoft
DHCP Server, and Windows clients can retrieve their configuration from a
Linux system running the DHCP daemon.
We have been running the Microsoft DHCP Serv... (more)
There are various ways to give your user community access to Linux
applications, without wiping the hard disks of their PCs. The most commonly
used ones are to give a user a second PC which runs Linux, to install a
dual-boot environment with Windows and Linux, or to install Linux into a
virtual PC environment such as VMware. But none of these methods provide a
smooth and transparent mixe... (more)
Over the past few months I've had lunch with a lot of old friends who were
techies 10 years ago, but are now IT managers at large financial
institutions. Linux came up in the conversations with most of them, and I was
surprised by the misconceptions they have about the whole open source
environment. I ended up debunking the myths that seem to exist around Linux.
This is how most of my co... (more)
Earlier this year, I dealt with a small company with three users. They also
had three servers:
300 MHz web server running NT4 Server and IIS 233 MHz file server running NT4
Server 500 MHz mail and database server running NT4, Exchange 5.5 and SQL
Server 7.0
The services were split across three machines to spread risks. Through their
firewall, only the web server was fully visible from the... (more)