The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) protocol enables a system to receive configuration information from a DHCP server, including an IP address, as part of the boot process. DHCP servers maintain pools of IP addresses from which to assign addresses to DHCP clients. A site that uses DHCP can use a smaller pool of IP addresses than the number of IP addresses that would be required if every client was assigned a permanent IP address, provided that the clients are not continuously connected. In this case, you can share addresses between clients, and thus reduce the total required number of IP addresses. However, if you do not have a sufficient coming and going of clients, you ultimately will require the same number of IP addresses. The more general advantage of using DHCP addresses is that you do not need to perform as much configuration of individual hosts because you set up a DHCP server with the configuration details. In this way, hosts require very minimal or even no manual configuration. You can set up the DHCP service to manage your site's IP addresses or a portion of the addresses. For more information, refer to Working With DHCP in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .