An administrator implements a private cloud to be used as a test environment and wants to limit guests per subnet to 14 with a /20 network. Which mechanism should be used to assign the networks?

An administrator implements a private cloud to be used as a test environment and wants to limit guests per subnet to 14 with a /20 network. Which mechanism should be used to assign the networks?

• A. DHCP
• B. Subnet
• C. VLAN
• D. Gateway

Answer: (A)

The main idea is automating IP address assignment across multiple small subnets carved from a larger pool. DHCP is the mechanism that makes this practical. By configuring DHCP with multiple scopes, each scope can represent a separate subnet (for example, using /28 subnets that yield 14 usable addresses). The DHCP server then leases addresses from the appropriate scope to guests, ensuring no subnet exceeds its 14-host limit while still using the /20 block as the overall address pool. VLANs can provide isolation between these subnets at Layer 2, but the actual network address assignment is handled by DHCP. Subnetting defines the size and boundaries of the networks, and a gateway is simply the router address for each subnet, not the assignment mechanism.

The main idea is automating IP address assignment across multiple small subnets carved from a larger pool. DHCP is the mechanism that makes this practical. By configuring DHCP with multiple scopes, each scope can represent a separate subnet (for example, using /28 subnets that yield 14 usable addresses). The DHCP server then leases addresses from the appropriate scope to guests, ensuring no subnet exceeds its 14-host limit while still using the /20 block as the overall address pool. VLANs can provide isolation between these subnets at Layer 2, but the actual network address assignment is handled by DHCP. Subnetting defines the size and boundaries of the networks, and a gateway is simply the router address for each subnet, not the assignment mechanism.