By Amy Haigh
As a network administrator, you will be responsible for ensuring that each host on your network is configured with the appropriate TCP/IP parameters to communicate with other hosts. To communicate on a network, either private or public, a host must be configured with — at minimum — an IP address, a subnet mask, and a default gateway. On a small private network with consistent hosts, you can manually configure these options on each host. But if you administer a large network, or even a small network where laptops and tablets continuously connect and disconnect, you will find implementing Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to be a lifesaver.
