Dynamic IP addressing

   If we have a network of few computers attached to it and if the organization of the network is static ( the computers are attached to the network all the time), it's easiest to assign IP address to every computer from the block of addresses supplied by InterNIC.

   Managing IP addresses, however, can get quite cumbersome if the network has many computers or if the network configuration changes constantly, thanks to users logging on to the network configuration to the network remotely ( using, say, the Dial-Up Networking accessory )or computers being moved from subnet to another. One way to solve this problem to assign IP addresses to network computer dynamically. In other words, when a computer log on to the network, it is assigned an IP address from pool of available addresses. When the computer logs off, the addresses it was using is returned to the pool.

   The system that manages this dynamic allocation of addresses is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), and the computers that  implement DHCP are called DHCP serves, Windows95 supports DHCP via either Windows NT DHCP servers on the network, or PPP dial-up routers.