Using a BOOTP or DHCP Server

The switch contains a BOOTP and DHCP client, so if you have a BOOTP or DHCP server in your IP network, you can have it assign IP addresses to the switch. This is more likely to be desirable on the switch's VLAN mgmt than it is on any other VLANs.

If you are using IP and you have a Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) server set up correctly on your network, you must provide the following information to the BOOTP server:

  • Switch Media Access Control (MAC) address, found on the rear label of the switch
  • IP address
  • Subnet address mask (optional)

The switch does not retain IP addresses assigned by BOOTP or DHCP through a power cycle, even if the configuration has been saved. To retain the IP address through a power cycle, you must configure the IP address of the VLAN using the CLI or Telnet.

If you need the switch's MAC address to configure your BOOTP or DHCP server, you can find it on the rear label of the switch. Note that all VLANs configured to use BOOTP or DHCP use the same MAC address to get their IP address, so you cannot configure the BOOTP or DHCP server to assign multiple specific IP addresses to a switch depending solely on the MAC address.