The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
Each computer on a TCP/IP network must have its own unique IP address. When the ARPANET was first put into place, it was a simple matter to manually assign an IP address to each computer on the network. However, complications could arise when using this manual method. For example, in a large network, if you didn't keep good records, you might assign the same address to two different computers. In that situation, how would a packet get delivered to the correct computer?
The dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) was designed to solve this problem. DHCP allows the network administrator to assign a range of addresses to a DHCP server that, in turn, leases the IP addresses out to individual computers, keeping ...
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