human
I am setting up a home network and need help understanding the differences between DHCP and static IPs.
assistant
DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol and is a service that many routers use to assign dynamic IP addresses to devices on a network. With a DHCP assigned IP address, you don't need to manually configure any settings as the DHCP server will do this for you. A static IP, or a fixed IP address, is an address that you manually assign yourself to a device. It is a permanent address and will never change unless you decide to change it. With a static IP you will need to configure the network settings manually.