DHCP lends the address until it expires
DHCP hands out leases with a duration, not perpetual ownership. The lifetime drives renewal and lets the server reclaim addresses the device no longer uses. Borrow a number, not own it DHCP does not give a device a permanent address; it lends one for a bounded time. On joining, a client broadcasts to discover a server, and the server offers an address with a lease lifetime defined by the network’s configured lease time. Because the assignment is temporary, the server always knows which addresses are valid and can track them in a pool without guessing. That temporary nature is what makes a large, frequently-changing network manageable: addresses are currency the server can hand out, extend, and take back, rather than addresses a host keeps forever. ...