Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

Supporting MADCAP

Clients using MADCAP must be configured to use the MADCAP API. For more information on writing or programming applications that use this API, see the developer resources made available through the Microsoft Solution Developers Network (MSDN).

MADCAP assists in simplifying and automating configuration of multicast groups on your network, but it is not required for the operation of multicast groups or for the DHCP service. Multicast scopes provide only address configuration and do not support or use other DHCP-assignable options.

MADCAP address configuration for clients should be done independently of how the clients are configured to receive their primary IP address. Computers that use either static or dynamic configuration through a DHCP server can be MADCAP clients.

The Windows 2000 DHCP service supports both DHCP and MADCAP, although these services function separately. Clients of one are not dependent on the use or configuration of the other.

Clients that are manually configured or use DHCP to obtain a unicast IP address lease can also use MADCAP to obtain multicast IP address configuration.
Clients that do not support MADCAP service or are unable to contact and obtain multicast configuration from a MADCAP server can be configured in other ways so that they participate in either permanent or temporary multicast groups on the network.
In all TCP/IP networks, each computer requires a unique primary computer IP address (that is not shared or duplicated) from one of the standard address classes used for building the network (Class A, B, or C range). You must assign this required primary computer IP address before you can configure a computer to support and use secondary IP addresses such as multicast IP addresses.
When multicast address configuration is used, a MADCAP server can dynamically perform this configuration for clients that support the MADCAP protocol.