[X4U] Home Networking Questions ( Static IP verses DHCP)

[Eugene Lee]

On Wed, Jul 07, 2004 at 11:24:51AM -0500, James Rice wrote:
: 
: This may be a dumb question, but what would be the advantage of DHCP 
: with manual address?  If you want DHCP to assign your address, gateway 
: and DNS ok.  Or if you want/need to staticly assign addresses ok too, 
: but why have both enabled?

DHCP sets the gateway IP address, DNS server addresses, and other useful
bits besides assigning an IP address for that machine.  There are times
when a machine needs to come up with a specific IP address because that
IP address has special privileges or restrictions.  For example, several
cheapy home routers with basic firewall features let you set a specific
IP address to be a DMZ host.  Your LAN setup has all of your machines
use DHCP for everything, as expected, but you have a single dedicated
machine specific configured to be a DMZ host (like a hardened Unix box
attached to a line printer to log neat stuff).  Another example is if
you are doing IPsec which is *much* easier to set up if both machines
have static IP addresses and not dynamically changing ones that is
typical of *Dynamic* Host Configuration Protocol.


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/