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

[James Rice]

I know the functions of DHCP.  (I'm a network/system admin of a mixed 
Irix/Mac/Linux/Wintel shop, four physical locations).  As far as a 
firewall assigned DMZ goes, we use a double firewall DMZ with the two 
firewalls being from a different vendor with  a different OS (if they 
crack the first one, they have access to the DMZ only but they will need 
to use an different set of tools to crack the second to get to the LAN) 
but our network is entirely set up static except for 20 addresses in the 
high end of our subnets for notebook/tablets that move from office to 
office.  I feel that most network admin tasks are easier on a mixed 
network if the address scheme is static.  There is a certain amount of 
record keeping involved to avoid IP conflicts, but it's a small price to 
pay.  I just can't see the advantage of having a  DHCP client running on 
a machine with a manually assigned address. 

This is of course on a small network of four class C subnets routed into 
a small WAN.  If I had a class A or even a B, the sheer overhead of  
recordkeeping would make DHCP a must.  We also don't netboot anything, 
do not use NIS and only rarely use tftp so some of the more advanced 
features of DHCP aren't needed in our little corner of the world.

At home, my network is also a hybrid.  My kids Wintel machines are DHCP, 
while my Macs and Unix boxes are all static.  I don't host anything at 
home, but do connect via VPN to the office in order to copy files back 
and forth.

Eugene Lee wrote:

>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.
>
>
>  
>