Specifications

Table Of Contents
Chapter 3 Connecting on a LAN
Using DHCP
Niagara Release 2.3
Niagara Networking & Connectivity Guide Revised: May 22, 2002
3–23
Step 9
Verify connectivity to the JACE by connecting with the Admin Tool.
If you cannot reach a JACE-4/5 with the Admin Tool after making these changes,
consult Systems Engineering.
Using DHCP
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is an Internet standard used to aid in
configuring IP hosts. For more information about DHCP, see the “Static and
Dynamic IP Addressing” section on page 1-25.
Niagara Considerations
DHCP is supported by the operating systems used by all Niagara hosts. However, the
following notes apply:
Static IP addresses provide the most reliable connectivity between Niagara
hosts. Problems can develop, for example, if one station is assigned a new IP
by the DHCP server and it has links to other stations. Those links stop working
until those stations are restarted. The DHCP server should be configured to
allocate the same IP address to the Niagara host whenever it requests one. Note
that this address is not really a static IP address, but rather is a dynamic one
reserved by the DHCP server for the particular host.
For the DHCP administrator to set up the reserved IP address, you will need to
provide the MAC address of the Niagara host to the DHCP administrator (see
“Determining the MAC Address”).
You can set up DHCP on a JACE-4/5 with the Admin Tool but you must use
Windows networking tools to set up DHCP on any Niagara host running the
Windows OS.
Windows 2000 DHCP servers can be configured to update DNS servers on
behalf of devices that do not support dynamic update. JACEs do not support
Dynamic DNS updates as defined in RFC 2136. JACE-4/5s do support
Dynamic DNS (through a 3
rd
party) when using a dial-up ISP account to
connect to the Internet (see the “Configuring DDNS on the JACE-4/5” section
on page 5-22).
Determining the
MAC Address
Use the following procedure to determine the MAC address of a Niagara host.
Procedure 3-10 Determining the MAC address of a Niagara host.
Step 1
Attach your engineering station to the same network segment as the Niagara host.
Step 2
Open a Windows command prompt.
Step 3
Ping the Niagara host at its current IP address (see “ping,” page 2-20).