Windows includes an Alternate Configuration tab in the Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) properties pane. This configuration is used if a DHCP server is unreachable and you’d prefer not to use an APIPA address. You can instead manually specify an IP address, subnet mask, Default gateway, DNS information, and WINS server information.
IP addressing
Devices are generally assigned an IP automatically from a DHCP server. But if you want to statically assign an IP address, you’ll need to specify 3 items: Unique IP address, subnet mask (which identifies the subnet), and the gateway (the device you connect to which allows for communication outside of the subnet and to the rest of the world)
DNS
A DNS setting points to the DNS server which will convert domain names to IP addresses.
