Why are there fewer DHCPACKs than DHCPOFFERs?
- DHCP snooping is blocking requests
- Some clients received offers from multiple DHCP servers
- The server is rate-limiting responses
- The DHCP pool is exhausted
Explanation: According to the sources, the standard DHCP negotiation process (both for IPv4 and IPv6) is designed to support redundancy by using a four-message exchange .
In environments where multiple DHCP servers are active, a single client's initial discovery broadcast can be received by all servers, each of which may respond with a DHCPOFFER .
The client, however, will typically choose only one of these offers and send a DHCPREQUEST to that specific server .
Because only the chosen server responds with a final DHCPACK while the other offers are not pursued and eventually expire, it is normal to see fewer DHCPACKs than DHCPOFFERs in the network statistics .
Related exam: CCNP ENARSI v9 Course Final Exam
