For terminal clients and diskless workstations,BOOTP was the perfect solution to obtain a personal IP address in the network required, and to reference the operating system in this way. The fact that the address reference could be carried out by the communication protocol at the same time as the boot process was practical as well as straightforward for stationary computers, which were used in networks of a manageable size . For example, it was rarely a problem that the administrator had to manually configure the network information tables of the BOOTP server.
However, as networks became ever larger and computers increasingly independent, and – due to the development of portable devices – more mobile too, it was evident that the lack of opportunity for automation of the configuration process was negative. There was a requirement for a new protocol. With the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) this came about in 1993 (final specification in RFC 2131). DHCP is in fact largely based on the structure of the bootstrap protocol, but it complements this due to various additional configuration options, and offers the opportunity to assign reusable network addresses to clients seeking connection. The allocation of addressed information with DHCP also works during current system operation – it is not necessary to restart, as was the case with BOOTP.
“BOOTP vs. DHCP” – the most important differences are given below:
| BOOTP | DHCP |
Auto-configuration | Allocation of IP addresses requires manual configuration | Supports automatic allocation and acquisition of IP addresses (as well as manual configuration) |
Temporary IP addresses | Not possible | Possible for a limited period |
Supports mobile devices | IP configuration and access to network information are not possible | Supports the mobility of network clients |
Error occurrence | Very prone to errors due to manual configuration | Practically immune to errors thanks to automated configuration of the network components |
System requirements | None | Requires a disk to store and pass on information |
Thanks to the various optimizations, DHCP has quickly become the standard protocol for IP management in networks, while the BOOTP protocol is now of only historical value. As DHCP supports the bootstrap protocol, in principle, DHCP servers can also respond to any requests made by a BOOTP client.