BOOTP Clients Requesting Boot File Information

To configure the DHCP service to provide boot file information to BOOTP clients, you must do the following:

  1. Create a client address reservation for each BOOTP client within an active DHCP scope.
    BOOTP addresses must be reserved by an IP address reservation that you make for each BOOTP client. When you make client reservations, enter the BOOTP client's physical or media access control address, as assigned in LAN adapter hardware for the Unique identifier in the Add Reservation dialog box. BOOTP clients use this address when they start and send a BOOTP request. In the same dialog box, under Allowed client types , you should click either BOOTP only or Both when you create each BOOTP client reservation.

  2. Create BOOTP entries for each client-specific platform in the BOOTP table on the DHCP server.

Information stored in the BOOTP table is returned to any requesting BOOTP clients on the network that broadcast a BOOTP request message. If at least one BOOTP entry has been added to the BOOTP table, the DHCP service replies to BOOTP client requests. If no BOOTP entries are configured, the DHCP service ignores BOOTP request messages.

The reply message returned by the DHCP service indicates the name and location of another server on the network (a TFTP server) that the client can then contact to retrieve its boot image file.