Anywhere Computing with Laptops: Making Mobile Easier

Dynamic IP Addressing Versus Fixed IP Assignment

If your Internet connection works using a dynamic IP (Internet Protocol) address, it means that every time your computer starts up, it is assigned an IP address from the pool of available addresses. The same thing is true when your IP is released and renewed using Ipconfig. In other words, you don't have a fixed IP address on the Internet. You can think of dynamic IP addressing as similar to time-sharing at a holiday resort: You can pack more travelers in because nobody owns anything specific, but you don't know for sure exactly who will be at a specific location at any given time.

Dynamic IP addressing is the most common way ISPs such as your cable or DSL provider use to assign you an IP address ...