DHCP scope exhaustion occurs when there are no more available IP addresses in the DHCP pool to assign to new clients12.
This can cause network connectivity issues for clients that rely on DHCP to obtain an IP address dynamically12.
The symptoms of DHCP scope exhaustion include:
Clients receiving APIPA addresses (169.254.x.x) or no IP address at all12.
Clients losing network connectivity after their lease expires and cannot renew it12.
Clients experiencing intermittent network connectivity when they disconnect and reconnect, as they may get an IP address from a different DHCP server or a released address from the same DHCP server12.
The solution for DHCP scope exhaustion is to either increase the size of the DHCP pool, split the network into smaller subnets with their own DHCP scopes, or implement a DHCP relay agent to forward DHCP requests to another DHCP server with more available addresses12.
Incorrect firewall settings, inappropriate VLAN assignment, hardware failure, and overloaded CAM table in switch are not likely causes of the network connectivity issues described in the question, as they would affect all clients or specific segments of the network, not randomly selected users12. References:
1: CompTIA Network+ N10-008 Exam Cram, 6th Edition, Chapter 3: IP Addressing and Subnetting, p. 98-99
2: CompTIA Network+ N10-008 Cert Guide, 1st Edition, Chapter 4: IP Addressing, p. 156-157