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How to Make a Windows server 2003 Computer Member of Any DHCP User Class?

By Codrut Nistor

Posted in How-to, Windows-server-2003

DHCP Server is computer that provides automatic IP addresses to the client machines which are configured to obtain IP address automatically. Since these client machines do not have static addresses they look out for DHCP server located anywhere in the network to receive dynamic IP address from it. As DHCP server has a specific range it provides IP address from that range to the client machine which allows it to connect to all computers connected to a common network and share common IP address range. In some cases however systems admins would not want any specific machine or couple of machines to communicate with the machines connected to regular network. On the contrary they would want a few machines to connect to a separate section of the network which may have separate DNS server and different default gateway. In these cases DHCP servers can be configured with a separate user class which provides a separate range of IP address to the client computers requesting an IP address from the DHCP server. However clients can receive these IP addresses from separate range only when they are configured as the member clients of that specific class. You can configure any client computer to get IP address of any specific user class from DHCP server by following the below instructions:

  1. Log on to the computer with administrative privileges.
  2. Click on Start button and from the menu click on Run.
  3. In the Run command box type CMD and press enter.
  4. In the opened command window type the following command to make the computer member of DHCP user class. (Assuming that the name of DHCP user class is Accounts)
  5. Ipconfig /setclassid “Local Area Connection” “Accounts”

In the above command “Local Area Connection” is the name of the LAN card and “Accounts” is the name of the DHCP user class. Also by typing ipconfig /showclassid “Local Area Connection” command you can view the name of the DHCP user class of which a particular LAN Card of your computer is a member.

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