IP addresses on local network change

[Angelo Moreschini]

Hi,

I am newbie to  Fedora and I would like ask for a (for me important)
clarification regarding the assignment of the IP address of the computers
of my LAN.

Having problems to access to a repository located on another computer on my
LAN, I used, several times, the ping command to check the accessibility of
the nodes in the network ...


With my surprise, the answers that I received using the ping command (with
IP number) had not been consistent.

...an IP number available at a certain time was no longer available some
time after (and vice-verse);
And happened also that non-existent IP addresses in the network
occurred as available,
...some times....

Moreover, a test done with /sbin/ifconfig  stated that some IP addresses
changed in the time.. ...

[angelo@zorro ~]$ /sbin/ifconfig
em0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.0.0.6  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 10.0.0.255
        inet6 fe80::227:eff:fe1f:824c  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:27:0e:1f:82:4c  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 28131  bytes 30128278 (28.7 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 20820  bytes 2430096 (2.3 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 20  memory 0xf2100000-f2120000

[angelo@zorro ~]$ /sbin/ifconfig
em0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 10.0.0.1  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 10.0.0.255
        inet6 fe80::227:eff:fe1f:824c  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:27:0e:1f:82:4c  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 44558  bytes 37451123 (35.7 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 33627  bytes 6296194 (6.0 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 20  memory 0xf2100000-f2120000

I didn't expect a such (for me) strange situation, and I would like to have
some explanation about it.
I can only think that all can be correlated to the dynamic assignment of
the IP address (DHCP), but the change of the IP happen also if the
computers are not rebooted.

If, is possible, I should like have a reference to documentation that can
explain this my problem.

Thank you

Regards

Angelo