Disabling DHCP for a Connection in Windows
If you’re running a typical home network, then your devices receive their IP addresses via the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). This means they’re assigned an IP address when they connect to the network, and may in fact receive a completely different one the next time. Whether or not your device will use DHCP or not is a setting unique to each connection. In other words, if you turn off DHCP for your wired connection, all your wireless connections will continue to use DHCP until you do the same. To turn off DHCP for a connection in Windows:
Enabling DHCP in Windows
While it’s something of an undertaking to disable DHCP for a connection, it’s much easier to re-enable it.
How DHCP Works
Most modern networking equipment is configured to act as a DHCP server by default. These devices, like your home router, will listen for new devices on the network that are requesting an IP address. They’ll then assign that address, and make sure it’s reserved and doesn’t get assigned to anything else. On the flip side, most computer and mobile device OSes are also set up by default to be DHCP clients, or to request an IP address from a DHCP server as soon as they connect to a network. This is what allows you to simply plug in an Ethernet cable or connect to a wireless network and be “on the ‘Net” – no fuss, no muss.
Reasons to Turn DHCP Off
But DHCP by its nature means your device may have different addresses over time, and there are some reasons you might not want this. A prime example is if you’re running a server, such as a self-hosted web server. You’ll need a consistent way to contact said server, and the easiest path to achieve that is to give it a static IP address, i.e. you’ll actually configure the machine with an IP address yourself. On the plus side, this means you have control over which address your machine receives. However, you’ll need to be careful with those configurations, especially when it comes to not duplicating any addresses.
