Subject: 19. I want to assign IP addresses to my workstation dynamically. How can I do this over an Ascend ISDN link?

Ascend equipment can allocate addresses by PPP/IPCP negotiation, but that only applies to the device that's doing the work of connecting: the remote calling device. It cannot apply to the computer behind the router, because nothing on that workstation is negotiating (it just thinks of itself as being on a little ethernet).

Ascend units with digital modems can assign addresses out of pools to the remote workstations calling in, because the workstation itself is doing the PPP negotiating.

If you want to assign remote addresses dynamically to workstations attached to Ascend routers via ethernet, you'll need a BOOTP/DHCP server sitting on your backbone LAN, answering requests for IP addresses from remote workstations. In order to accomplish this you'll have to turn bridging on, because the ethernet BOOTP packet which requests an IP address must be bridged (you can't speak TCP/IP if you don't have an address yet).

[I haven't tested this yet over ISDN; if you have, please let us know your positive or negative experiences with it. -ddl]

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