DHCP or Static IP Address?

  • Thread starter OZZYGT
  • 8 comments
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Which one is better?


  • Total voters
    5

OZZYGT

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OZZYGT
Yeah, me and my co-worker have been wondering which of these is better. I'm sorry I'm not providing you with enough background, but we just want to hear your opinion about these two.

If you don't know much, but have some knowledge about them, please don't hesitate to vote on the poll shown above of this post. :)

All help is appreciated, thanks!
 
That's like saying what's better, lemonade or tires. :dopey:

They serve two different purposes.

Unless for some reason you need to know exactly where something is on the network, at any time, no matter what, come hell or high water, no exceptions, there's no reason for static IPs on general stations of a private network. Somebody has to keep track of assignments, what addresses are used by whom, what addresses are free, and somebody's gonna miss something and stuff isn't going to work because two or more claim the same address. The administrative hassle has no payoff.

That said, servers, printers, routers, etc. HAVE to be at a known address. Those are static.

Everything else is DHCP, nobody cares what their address is, as long as they can use the network.

So if you're talking about general PCs on a work network, or just a few PCs at home, then DHCP is MUCH better, and got my vote on that basis.

Finally, there's still the administrative task of making sure static devices don't have addresses in your DHCP pool, which is a simple matter of designating ranges to use. For my work, if I'm setting up a basic Class C private network for a customer, they'll have a 192.168.x.x address with a 255.255.255.0 subnet. I'll put the default router at .1, other routers if any consecutive with that, servers in the high single digits. I'll put managed switches in the teens, printers in the forties and fifties. I'll let the phone guys have the 80s and 90s for their stuff, if they even need that many. If they have IP phones, those will be DHCP or another range, depending on Avaya, Cisco, whoever.
I usually put the century numbers (100-199) in my DHCP range, and leave 200-254 free for weird stuff, like cameras, digital recording, whatever.
 
Well, we work at a bank, in the IT department; and one of our co-workers (who has just been hired) keeps complaining about the system that we use.

So if we find out that he's actually right, then we might point that out to the IT Director.

But anyway, that was great wfooshee! thanks for the help so far. 👍
 
I musta hit quote instead of edit. It's late. This post has no further reason to exist, see #5 for what I intended.
 
Another consideration is that banks, for auditing purposes, sometimes need to monitor ALL data traffic inbound or out, and knowing EXACTLY where the source or destination of that traffic is may be a reason to go with assigned static IPs. Personally I don't see it, but from what I've seen, bank auditors are . . . . different.

The machine at 192.168.16.10 downloaded 2.8GB last night from debbiedoeswhoever.oohlala. With DHCP that address might (but probably not) have shifted to a different PC when the lease expires.
 
If you use applications that require port forwarding (as I do) then i think it's best to have a static IP.
 
I voted for option #4: Neither is better for everything, and both are necessary.

wfooshe did an excellent job explaining the differences and purposes of the two.
 
The machine at 192.168.16.10 downloaded 2.8GB last night from debbiedoeswhoever.oohlala. With DHCP that address might (but probably not) have shifted to a different PC when the lease expires.
Which, in a tightly controlled environment, with DHCP, will be logged anyway - Machinename, MAC address as well as the use who's logged on. We're in the process of implementing that (Windows Server 2003 environment).... :-|
 
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