Entries in dhcpd.leases file

[Alan DeKok]

Simon Kelley wrote:

> By contrast, dnsmasq doesn't make a change of server state when it sends 
> an OFFER, but the offered address is calculated as a hash from the 
> client MAC address. This ensures that addresses are not re-used except 
> when the hash algorithm collides.

   This works if the range is largely empty.  If the range is nearly 
full, then the mac->IP hash doesn't help, because it's cheaper just to 
scan the free list.  And if the range is nearly full, then it's much 
more important to save the OFFER with a temporary lease, because it's 
likely that many people are asking for leases in a small time period.

   Not tracking the offers in that scenario would mean that many people 
would get the offer, and you have a race condition.  So most people 
would go through many OFFER, ACK, NACK stages before getting a lease.

   If dnsmasq *doesn't* have an option to remember OFFERs (I haven't 
looked), then it probably will fail in awkward ways when the range is 
nearly full.

> In the case of a hash collision, 
> dnsmasq takes advantage of the "free to reuse" language to stay within 
> spec. (at least, I contend that it's within spec and nobody has ever 
> demonstrated otherwise!)
> 
> As always, there's More Than One Way To Do It.

   This is an optimization that works in some cases, but not in others, 
like most optimizations.

   Alan DeKok.