Pro Cons of Windows DHCP server for AS5300 RAS

[o.abdella]

What are the pros/Cons of using ip helper address pointing to a Windows 2K DHCP server, as opposed to using DHCP locally?

[thisisshanky]

If you configure, DHCP server locally, the Router's role is DHCP server. If you configure, ip helper-address, then the Router's role is DHCP relay agent.

Advantage of locally enabling DHCP server is that,you can implement this server, at the Distribution layer, so that the DHCP servers are more nearer to the vlans. DHCP requests need not go down through the distribution and core layers to the server farms to get a leased address. For each vlan, you can configure the dhcp pools, locally.

One disadvantage would be, that, storing each binding (ip add to mac) would ofcourse need memory.

ALso Administration can be done using GUI if you do it in Windows platform. If you enable it locally, administration of DHCP will be through CLI.