Networking / Beginners

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Using Superscopes

A superscope is an administrative grouping of scopes that is used to support multinets, or multiple logical subnets on a single network segment. Multinetting commonly occurs when the number of hosts on a physical segment grows beyond the capacity of the original address space. By creating a logically distinct second scope (such as 207.46.150.0) to add to an original scope (such as 207.46.9.0), and then grouping these two scopes into a single superscope, you can double your physical segment's capacity for addresses. (In multinet scenarios, routing is also required to connect the logical subnets.) In this way, the DHCP server can provide clients on a single physical network with leases from more than one scope.

Note Superscopes contain only a list of member scopes or child scopes that can be activated together; they are not used to configure other details about scope use.

To create a superscope, you must create a scope first. After you have created a scope, you can create a superscope by right-clicking the DHCP server icon in the DHCP console tree and then selecting New Superscope. This procedure launches the New Superscope Wizard. In the wizard, select the scope or scopes that you would like to add as members. You can also add new scopes to the superscope later.

To create a superscope, complete the following steps:

1. Open the DHCP console.
2. In the console tree, select the applicable DHCP server.
3. From the Action menu, select New Superscope.
   This menu command appears only if at least one scope that is not currently part of a superscope has been created at the server.
4. Follow the instructions in the New Superscope Wizard.