Some embodiments provide a method for dynamically configuring multiple instances of applications that operate on clients in a network system. The method of some embodiments uses the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to configure the multiple instances of each application to share a pool of resources specific to the application that are used for configuring the application on each of the clients. Some embodiments of the invention store an application ID in DHCP-formatted packets to differentiate the packets from DHCP packets and to distribute shared configuration resources between various instances of the application.