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Not strictly necessary though.

I grew up sans DHCP with static IP assignments per device .. and still practice that on modern home networks and production networks.

The only DHCP calls here are made by foreign devices wanting an assigned address, which gets them on a narrow range on a side net.






In that case sure maybe not. However, most systems aren't run by deep experts but by regular users which expect a device to be plugged into a network and then have the capability to use the internet without user interference. That more or less necessitates DHCP.

> However, most systems aren't run by deep experts ...

Luckily static IP addresses can be set up by the majority of teenagers that just want to play Doom, etc.

At least that was the case decades ago .. is this now "deep knowledge" that necessitates that OS's have to use DHCP with no other option ?

Perhaps we have different understandings of the words "necessary" and "sufficient", etc.




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