DHCP Server Object

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

The DHCP Server performance object consists of counters that monitor DHCP service activity. The DHCP service enables the server to perform as a DHCP server and configure DHCP-enabled client computers on your network, as described in the DHCP standard. This object is available when the service is running.

Counter Name Description Counter Type

Acks/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP acknowledgements have been sent by the DHCP server. A sudden or abnormal increase in this number indicates that a large number of clients are being renewed by the DHCP server. This may indicate that scope lease times are too short.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Active Queue Length

Shows the number of packets in the processing queue of the DHCP server. This number equals the number of unprocessed messages received by the server. A large number may indicate heavy server traffic.

PERF_COUNTER_RAWCOUNT

Conflict Check Queue Length

Shows the number of packets waiting in the DHCP server queue due to conflict detection. This queue holds messages that cannot be responded to while the DHCP server performs address conflict detection. A large value may indicate that the DHCP server property Conflict detection attempts has been set too high, or that there is heavy lease traffic on the server.

PERF_COUNTER_RAWCOUNT

Declines/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP declines have been received by the DHCP server. A high value indicates that several clients have found their addresses to be in conflict, possibly indicating network trouble. You may want to enable conflict detection on the DHCP server. Conflict detection should only be used temporarily on the server.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Discovers/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP discovers have been received by the DHCP server. A sudden or abnormal increase indicates that a large number of clients are probably attempting to initialize and obtain an IP address lease from the server, such as when a number of client computers are started at one time.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Duplicates Dropped/sec

Shows the rate at which the DHCP server received duplicate packets. A large number indicates that clients are probably timing out too fast or that the server is not responding very fast.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Informs/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP informs have been received by the DHCP server. DHCP inform messages are used when the DHCP server queries for the directory service for the enterprise root, and when dynamic update updates are being done on behalf of clients by the server.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Milliseconds per Packet (Avg).

Shows the average time per packet taken by the DHCP server to send a response. This number can vary depending on the server hardware and its input/output (I/O) subsystem. A sudden or unreasonable increase may indicate a problem, either with the I/O subsystem slowing or because of intrinsic processing overhead on the server computer.

PERF_COUNTER_RAWCOUNT

Nacks/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP negative acknowledgments (Nacks) have been sent by the DHCP server. A very high value may indicate potential network problems, such as misconfiguration of clients or the server. One possible cause of server problems is a deactivated scope. For clients, a very high value could be caused by computers moving between subnets, such as portable computers or other mobile devices.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Offers/sec

Shows that rate at which DHCP offers have been sent out by the DHCP server. A sudden or abnormal increase in this number indicates heavy traffic on the server.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Packets Expired/sec

Shows the rate at which packets expire in the DHCP server message queue. Packets expire because they are in the server's internal message queue for too long. A large number indicates that the server is either taking too long to process some packets while other packets are queued and becoming stale, or traffic on the network is too high for the DHCP server to handle. This could suggest a disk or memory bottleneck.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Packets Received/sec

Shows the rate at which packets are received by the DHCP server. A large number indicates heavy DHCP-related message traffic to the server.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Releases/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP releases have been received by the DHCP server. This number is only incremented when a client manually releases its address, such as when the ipconfig /release command is used at the client computer. Because clients rarely release their addresses, this counter should not be high for most networks and configurations.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER

Requests/sec

Shows the rate at which DHCP requests have been received by the DHCP server. A sudden or abnormal increase in this number indicates that a large number of clients are probably trying to renew their leases with the DHCP server. This may indicate that scope lease times are too short.

PERF_COUNTER_COUNTER