DCHP Lease Time

option.iv

option.iv

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Hello. Well, I have an airlink ar430w router. It has a lease time field where I specify how long it is in minutes. The default lease time I believe was 7 days. Now the problem is I have Cox cable (running XP), and whenever the lease time expires for one of the clients, they just disconnect from the internet. The signal is still fine, just no connectivity to the internet. I would have to reset the router through the firmware to get internet connectivity again. I was thinking either my computer wouldn't renew it's ip or the router just had issues with my internet provider.

As of late, I set the lease time to 5 minutes. And used the commands ipconfig/flushdns, ipconfig/registerdns, ipconfig/release, ipconfig/renew and ipconfig/all to check the lease times. And the computer seemed to stay connected as the lease times renewed and even after I restarted my computer. Now my settings are currently set to 1440 minutes (1 day) and I will try and see if my internet connection drops or not.

My main question is: Is the DHCP lease time on a router dependent on the internet provider? (What would be a good lease time for a cable internet provider? Is it generally better to keep the lease time low?)

Sorry if this is too much to read, I'm totally new to routers with the option to change the DHCP lease time. Before I only had a linksys wired router with no such option.
 
The DHCP lease time you set on your router is only for the computers on your local network (192.168.x.x) and has nothing to do with the your internet provider.

The client (your computers) will/should attempt to renew it's lease after half the DHCP lease time passes. It almost sounds like your computer wasn't attempting to renew the lease for some reason, or the router wasn't accepting the request.

Is your router firmware up to date?
 
Yeah, I think you're right. My firmware is up to date. I think my computer just doesn't renew it's lease. Though I don't think the problem is with the computer side. My Nintendo DS also cannot connect once it's lease is done with (for when lease time=7 days+), same goes for my other computer which is also wifi. Does my computer have to be on when it tries to renew it's lease?
 
[quote name='option.iv']Yeah, I think you're right. My firmware is up to date. I think my computer just doesn't renew it's lease. Though I don't think the problem is with the computer side. My Nintendo DS also cannot connect once it's lease is done with (for when lease time=7 days+), same goes for my other computer which is also wifi. Does my computer have to be on when it tries to renew it's lease?[/quote]
If multiple devices are having problems renewing the lease then it almost sounds like there is something wrong with the router. I don't know what that would be.

The computer has to be on to renew the lease, but if it is off when the lease expires/goes past half the lease time, it should renew when you start it.

Did it always act like this or is it a recent development? Did you change anything before this started? Is there a reset button on the router that would take everything back to factory defaults (I couldn't find a manual for it online to check)? Did you try that?
If all else fails you could try to install custom firmware (like DD-WRT here is a thread about installing DD-WRT on your router), but it can be a bit complicated and could "brick" your router if you happen to mess something up, so if you're not comfortable doing it, only do it as a last resort (like if you're going to get a new router anyways.)
 
Well, it always happened every 7 days. I believe it was 3 weeks ago since I bought it, making it around 3 times disconnecting. And the lease time was on by default with 7 days. This only happened when I have my router connected with the default 7 day lease time. I think I'll try to experiment as much as I can with the default router firmware until I can avoid this problem all together. Hopefully the router can handle lease times of 24 hours.
 
Yeah, I could do that. But the problem is that I set up the same exact router for my mother's business. And she isn't exactly technologically competent. But so far, so good here on my end setting the Lease time to 24 hours.
 
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