Does a DHCP server necessarily have to be the same machine as the router, or can a separate machine do it?

Question

I would like ip addresses to be doled out by a different machine than the one I have taking care of NAT and routing. Am I going to run into problems when I try it?

Answer 1

it is OK to use another machine as DHCP server, no problem, just make sure that the range of IP's at the DHCP pool doesnot include the router's IP, and don't forget to turn off the DHCP on the router

Answer 2

Not only is it ok, it's usually the case. In corporate/enterprise networks, it's surprisingly rare to find a DHCP process running on a router. Usually you have separate DHCP server(s) within a server farm/data center. Only problems you'll run into were listed: don't allow any statically-configured IPs into the dynamic IP pool, and make sure you're not running two DHCP servers assigning to conflicting subnet ranges.

Answer 3

It can be any machine on the network: you can even have more than one server on the same network (and there are reasons you may want to), but in that case you need to be very careful with setup so they do not allocate from incompatible (or for that matter exactly the same) address ranges. Having a service tied to something to a router simply doesn't make sense a lot of the time anyway. Although it is fairly unusual in a home network, larger networks frequently have more than one router in the same network segment.