Two differents subnets in one DHCP Server with one NIC

dhcpsubnetwindows-server-2003

I have one Windows 2003 DHCP Server, with one NIC in the subnet 192.168.40.x and I want to serve IPs from two differents subnets 192.168.40.x and 192.168.178.x. Now, I have the subnet 192.168.40.x full but the Server is not giving adresses from the other subnet. It is possible to do the server work with only one NIC?

My setup is this:

Windows 2003 Server [192.168.40.x]
· Scope [192.168.40.x] full
Router 192.168.40.x
Broadcast Adress 192.168.40.255
DNS Server 192.168.40.x, 192.168.178.x
· Scope [192.168.178.x] empty
Router 192.168.178.x
Broadcast Adress 192.168.178.255
DNS Server 192.168.40.x, 192.168.178.x

Best Answer

It's possible to do this but let's step back and ask the question how your subnets are setup.

The regular, actually-works, way of doing this would be to have two VLANs, one per subnet, setup on your switch. If this is what you're doing then you can simply convert your DHCP server's switch port to trunk mode then setup two different virtual addresses on the same NIC, again one per VLAN. At this point the machine will genuinely be on both subnets/VLANs so can hand out IPs to machines on both.

If your setup is different to this please let us know and we'll try to help.