[Ti] DHCP can be static IP but dynamic Router

[Sherman Gregory]

At 9:06 AM -0800 2/20/03, Robert Ameeti wrote:
>Dang. Yep, I've seen that pop menu item for quite a while and never 
>paid any attention to it. And with several large ISPs that I've 
>worked with, I've never seen it implemented or used. I guess it is 
>unusual enough that Apple's own definition for DHCP is technically 
>incorrect as well as I was.
>
><http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=51911>
>DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol-A protocol used to 
>distribute IP addresses to client computers. Each time a client 
>computer starts up, the protocol looks for a DHCP server and then 
>requests an IP address from the DHCP server it finds. The DHCP 
>server checks for an available IP address and sends it to the client 
>computer along with a lease period-the length of time the client 
>computer may use the address.
>--

I think that this definition over simplified, but essentially is 
correct.  It says nothing about how the server determines what IP 
address to assign.  In the case of a DSL modem acting as the DHCP 
server, it may just have one address to serve, and in that case you 
have a static IP address served via DHCP.  It could also, as 
mentioned, use the MAC (Hardware) address or other method to assign a 
static IP address to a given device.

Many people including many ISP tech support people assume that static 
IP means manual configuration.  This is simply not true.  This really 
bugs me.

If you really want to know the full definition of DHCP see RFC 2131 
and RFC 3396

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2131.txt?number=2131
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3396.txt?number=3396

      Sherman