Routes via DHCP | Mike’s Blog

Basically, this is a very old post. Originally it was posted in my old Russian blog in early 2012. Nevertheless, I hope it might be useful.

When I was working in the University we used PPTP VPN servers to let our staff access Internet. Computers got default gateway from VPN server and it was a real problem due to the fact that we had a lot of internal servers and different subnets so that gateway was unique for each building. To address this problem our system administrators had to add routes on every computer manually.

Possible solutions were to distribute routes thought DHCP-server.
At that time we used Cisco 4503E as a default gateway and DHCP server.

Routes are controlled by 249 DHCP option, for example, option 249 ip (network) (mask) (gateway).

There is RFC http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/52/I-D/draft-ietf-dhc-csr-06.txt

Unfortunately, it didn’t work /23 and /8 networks…windows computers just ignored them.

Lately, I realized, that it was possible to send option 249 in HEX format.

For instance:

route 172.172.0.0/21 168.168.168.168
write hex:
N byte: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
hex: 15 AC AC 00 A8 A8 A8 A8

description:
byte 1 – mask in hex (21dec -> 15 hex)
byte from 2 to 4 – our network
bytes from 5 to 8 – gateway

in configuration:
!
ip dhcp pool POOL
….
option 249 hex 15ACAC00A8A8A8A8
….
!

Actually, I found the script below to calculate HEX format for 249 option:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
sub option_121 {
my $gw = shift;
my $out_str = '';
my ($subnet, $mask, $b0, $b1, $b2, $b3);
foreach my $cidr (@_) {
($subnet, $mask) = split('/', $cidr);
($b0, $b1, $b2, $b3) = split(/\./, $subnet);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $mask);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b0);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b1) if($mask &gt; 8);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b2) if($mask &gt; 16);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b3) if($mask &gt; 24);
$out_str .= sprintf('%02x%02x%02x%02x', split(/\./, $gw));
}
return $out_str;
}
if(@ARGV &lt; 2)
{
print "Usage: $0 gw_ip subnet1/mask1 subnet2/mask2 ... subnetN/maskN\n";
}
elsif($ARGV[0] =~ /^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}$/)
{
print "DHCP option 121 (249) hex string: ".option_121(@ARGV)."\n";
}
else
{
print "Invalid gateway IP address: '$ARGV[0]'\n";
}

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

sub option_121 {

my $gw = shift;

my $out_str = '';

my ($subnet, $mask, $b0, $b1, $b2, $b3);

foreach my $cidr (@_) {

($subnet, $mask) = split('/', $cidr);

($b0, $b1, $b2, $b3) = split(/\./, $subnet);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $mask);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b0);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b1) if($mask > 8);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b2) if($mask > 16);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x', $b3) if($mask > 24);

$out_str .= sprintf('%02x%02x%02x%02x', split(/\./, $gw));

}

return $out_str;

}

if(@ARGV < 2)

{

print "Usage: $0 gw_ip subnet1/mask1 subnet2/mask2 ... subnetN/maskN\n";

}

elsif($ARGV[0] =~ /^\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}$/)

{

print "DHCP option 121 (249) hex string: ".option_121(@ARGV)."\n";

}

else

{

print "Invalid gateway IP address: '$ARGV[0]'\n";

}