I have a dhcp server on my lan which gives out a .200 to .250 range of addresses. The thing is, my router/default gateway is in this range. I basically redid an old configuration on a new server that was pre-existing when I arrived, but it didn't have an exlusion for the gateway's ip address. There has never been any problem regarding this and I am wondering why that is.

1. Does the dhcpd server check if an ip is in use before assigning or does the dhcpcd/pump client do this?

2. Also, how should I create the exclusion? I have seen configs on the net where they statically assign an ip to a hardware address. Is this what I have to do just to make sure the ip address doesn't get assigned? It seems kind of a round about way of doing it... Or do I have to define 2 ranges either side of this address just to do this?