I thought it would be nice to put an update in here for others that might notice the same behavior. It appears that this is intentional (??). The following is the response I received:
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”The log you see is the Discover package(the simulated DHCP detection package) of the camera, the camera sends them to check whether the wifi network is good. The camera sends the request package about every 5 minutes. And I ask[ed our engineer] if this can be canceled? He told me no. Because when the camera sends a DHCP Discover packet, if the router receives it, it will reply to the camera, and the camera will know if it is still connected to the router.”
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The 802.11 state machine has its own beacon/probe mechanism for maintaining a valid wireless association link (including the ability to switch channels when roaming in multi-channel environment). Testing a link with DHCP probes every 5 minutes seems superfluous and excessive. It begs the follow-up question: What problem are they trying to solve by introducing this new behavior?
I guess it's a good thing that I have my old DHCP config in place so my server is at least handing back the IP I want the camera to use. I would hate to have to trust the FW to do the right thing if my DHCP server passed back a different IP from the static config (which it would normally do for other new devices being added to the network).