DHCP is now a key potential point of failure for many organisations, said Nominum as it introduced version 2 of its high-availability Dynamic Configuration Server (DCS), which it claimed can provide over 2,400 DHCP leases per second, 59 times more than a widely used open source equivalent. DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, is the scheme that automatically assigns IP addresses within a network.

"A weak DHCP service means people can't get online, or it takes time," said Albert Gouyet, Nominum's marketing VP. He added that as more and more devices rely on IP - for example IP phones - existing DHCP servers may find it hard to keep up and could become unreliable. A particular problem is how long it takes to reboot the server after making changes, as users may be unable to get online during this period.

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