Why short DHCP leases? (connection dropping - the sequel)

[cbreyman]

Hey Sonic folks,

Seems like others (viewtopic.php?f=10&t=225) are having issues with dropped connections on strong signal as well. When I looked at my own modem, I saw that my connections were dropping when I had to renew a DHCP lease - every 5 min. Why are the DHCP servers configured for such a short lease period? Long renewal latency is bound to cause havoc with any type of streaming media.

[zbarr]

more info here...

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r261750 ... -5-minutes.

[cbreyman]

Thanks zbarr. @dane - why not arm your support staff with this info an push customers to static IP when the report the issue?

[dane]

Because setup of static IP is about as much near-term complexity as fixing the broken firewall behavior, but fixing the firewall is one-time, whereas operating on a static IP is an ongoing complexity.

-Dane

[cbreyman]

Actually, I do not believe I have any firewall issues. Modem w/DHCP direct to DSL. I do believe there is an issue with DHCP renewal latency when listening to/watch streaming media.

The key thing, Dane, is that since switching my wife has been pushing me to drop Sonic in favor of Comcast because of the dropouts while watching ABC, Netflix, etc. Not something either of us wants. My support responses thus far never brought up DHCP as a potential source of problems, blaming my house wiring. If I had spent the time to rewire the place and THEN found that the problem was on Sonic's end, I'd drop service in a second.

[dane]

I suspect that if you don't have a firewall, that DHCP is not the source of your trouble. We see this issue consistently with customers who use DD-WRT, Monowall etc, not standard DSL modems.

If the firewall is not allowing the lease renewal, lengthening the lease will just make the outage less frequent - in some ways, it's better that it's so frequent that it must be addressed. A failure once an hour or once every two hours might simply be an annoyance, never addressed.

-Dane