Nominum has enhanced its commercial-grade Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server with support for DHCPv6 and extensive new management capabilities that allow network operations staff to make the best use of precious IP addresses.
Personal computers have long used DHCP for connecting to the Internet, but now a multitude of new devices such as smart phones, VoIP devices, and netbooks also depend on it to get network access. With IPv6 gaining traction, hundreds of millions of additional devices will need connectivity and configuration parameters; and common applications such as voice over IP are not tolerant of any down time.
Nominum said most existing DHCP servers are significantly challenged supporting IPv4 networks, lacking the underlying architecture to allocate and manage IP addresses and host configuration parameters while maintaining performance at massive scale; these requirements are magnified with IPv6. Nominum developed a special in-memory database for DCS that is completely optimized to deliver high performance. A transaction log is maintained on the server's hard disk so the database can be recovered instantly in the event of a system crash. In addition, DCS has open interfaces to integrate with databases commonly used in conjunction with DHCP servers such as RADIUS, provisioning databases, or LDAP.
New features in Nominum's Dynamic Configuration System (DCS) include:
- SNMP-based management with alerts (traps) for critical notification of events
- Abandoned addresses to flag potential problems on the network or detect DoS attacks
- Notification when a "remaining address" threshold is exceeded to allow high service levels to be maintained with an absolute minimum of IP addresses
- High performance Dynamic DNS (DDNS) support for IPv4 and IPv6 allows automated updates of host information in authoritative DNS servers
- Complete standards-based support for both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 as well as IPv4 and IPv6 transport on a single server
