DHCP Performance Test

This test reports the performance statistics of the Microsoft 2000 DHCP server running on the network.

Target of the test : A DHCP Server

Agent deploying the test : An internal agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for every DHCP Server that is being monitored

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters	Description
Test period	This indicates how often should the test be executed.
Host	The variable name of the host for which the test is to be configured.
Port	Refers to the port used by the DHCP server.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement	Description	Measurement Unit	Interpretation
Avg packet rate	Refers to the average time in seconds used by the DHCP server to process each packet it receives.	Pkts/sec	This measure can vary depending on the server hardware and its I/O subsystem. A sudden or unusual increase might indicate a problem, either with the I/O subsystem becoming slower or because of an intrinsic processing overhead on the server computer.
Current message queue length	Refers to the current length of the internal message queue of the DHCP server.	Number	A large value in this measure might indicate heavy server traffic.
Request rate	Refers to the number of DHCP request messages received per second by the DHCP server from clients.	Reqs/sec	A sudden or unusual increase in this measure indicates a large number of clients trying to renew their leases with the DHCP server
Request acks rate	Refers to the number of DHCP acknowledgment messages sent per second by the DHCP server to clients.	Reqs/sec	A sudden or unusual increase in this measure indicates that a large number of clients are being renewed by the DHCP server
Request nacks rate	Refers to the number of negative acknowledgment messages sent per second by the DHCP server to clients.	Reqs/sec	A very high value might indicate potential network trouble in the form of misconfiguration of either the server or clients. When servers are misconfigured, one possible cause is a deactivated scope. For clients, a very high value could be caused by computers moving between subnets, such as laptop portables or other mobile devices.
Request declines rate	Refers to the number of DHCP decline messages received per second by the DHCP server from clients.	Reqs/sec	A high value indicates that several clients have found their address to be in conflict, possibly indicating network trouble.
Packets expired rate	Refers to the number of packets per second that expire and are dropped by the DHCP server.	Pkts/sec	A large value in this measure indicates that the server is either taking too long to process some packets while other packets are queued and becoming stale, or traffic on the network is too high for the server to manage.
Packet drop rate	Refers to the number of duplicate packets per second dropped by the DHCP server.	Pkts/sec	This measure can be affected by multiple clients or network interfaces forwarding the same packet to the server. A large value in this measure indicates that either clients are probably timing out too fast or the server is not responding fast enough.
Requests release rate	Refers to the number of DHCP release messages received per second by the DHCP server from clients.	Reqs/sec	This measure only exists if a DHCP client sends a release message to the server. This measure remains low for many DHCP network configurations.