I have a dhcp server on my lan which gives out a .200 to .250 range of addresses. The thing is, my router/default gateway is in this range. I basically redid an old configuration on a new server that was pre-existing when I arrived, but it didn't have an exlusion for the gateway's ip address. There has never been any problem regarding this and I am wondering why that is.

1. Does the dhcpd server check if an ip is in use before assigning or does the dhcpcd/pump client do this?

2. Also, how should I create the exclusion? I have seen configs on the net where they statically assign an ip to a hardware address. Is this what I have to do just to make sure the ip address doesn't get assigned? It seems kind of a round about way of doing it... Or do I have to define 2 ranges either side of this address just to do this?

1. depends what the server is, but generally no it's not something you'd do by default as it does slow down the over all process.

2. just create a reservation, easy enough on most servers, so that wheter the router requests an ip by dhcp or not, only that one mac address is eleigble for that ip.

I'm referring to isc dhcpd (sorry should have said). I will probably just create the reservation for the gateway address if there isn't a better way. I suppose having 2 address ranges either side of the address isn't a good idea either and it will take more lines, right?

you can do next to anything with ISC, it's by far the industry standard, so generally if it can't do it, no one can... having two ranges isn't a problem, but it's not massively elegant really, making a reservation is simple enough, here's a suitable example... http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200207/dhcp.html