FUBARinSFO
Premium
join:2006-03-25
Oakland, CA
|  Sonic.net email support exceeds expectations (July 2009)
Sonic.net exceeded expectations on this reply to my tech support query today. It's not usual (for me, anyway) to have something like this solved on the first turn of the crank.
-- Roy Zider
----- Original Message -----
From: BitBucket
To: support@sonic.net
Sent: Sunday, July 19, 2009 0:46
Subject: Re: [Sonic #1503070] DHCP requests, lease times
Daniel B.
1. Thanks -- that explains the 30-min lease renewal period on a 60-min lease. Glad to see that there was a logical and straightforward explanation for that behavior.
2. OK -- then you are in fact issuing 60-minute leases (3600 seconds). As I've seen on my end, however, that results in 2x lease renewals per hour (see 1.). The logs I was looking at, and the broken traffic, appears to mean that there is something of a hit to the upload or download stream from the re-syncing of the connection. I didn't measure it, but the graphs of the utorrent traffic show significant choking of the traffic. And Linksys EasyLink Advisor popped up with an Internet Connection Lost message every 30 minutes, I think. That gets tired real fast.
3. OK, so I am on static IP, and that clears up what I remember to be a discrepancy on my billing, which I think may have said dynamic ip. In any case I've only seen the one ip, so I thought it was strange that I would be referred to as dynamic ip when I've only seen the one ip address on my end. And that you still issue DHCP leases if requested even to static ip address accounts. Another mystery clarified.  Given the apparent overhead situation in (2) above, let's leave it on static ip. Thanks.
4. I had disabled SPI already, as it turns out, but in the context of trying to identify dropped packets. And I did go to static ip assignment for my router, which eliminated the DHCP traffic, after I sent the email to you requesting help.
This was very good, Daniel -- thank you for taking the time to deliver a thoughtful and complete answer. Maybe this is the reward for conducting this sort of business in the middle of the night -- we've got nobody else to interrupt us.
-- Roy Zider
(I've appended my original query to the end of your email, to make the thread complete).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sonic.net Tech Support"
To: "BitBucket"
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 22:24
Subject: Re: [Sonic #1503070] DHCP requests, lease times
Hello Roy,
Let me take a shot at your questions:
1: Typically a DHCP client (aka the equipment that is doing DHCP) will attempt to renew its lease after its reached half it's lease's expiration time, this is standard protocol. So for example, if we were to assign you a lease that expires in 20 minutes your router should attempt to renew it in 10, if we gave you a lease that expired in 60 minutes the router would then try to renew at 30 minutes.
2: The reason for a lease time being an hour rather than 24 hours our greater is because once a lease has been bound to a piece of hardware (computer, router, etc) no other computers can use that IP address. These allows IP address to be shuffled to other computers and users rather then being in a state of purgatory where nothing can touch it. I like to commonly describe it as sort of like the game musical chairs, there can only be one computer (the person) per IP lease (the chair) and if the leases never expired no one would be able to use that IP. This is mainly done to keep ISPs from running out of IPs to assign to computers; if one computer is no longer using an IP address (not hooked up, etc.) we then can pass it along to another computer
3: Your situation is actually a little bit different than our others users due to the fact you are on our legacy dynamic IP system. Previously before we went to true dynamic we had a system where we had everyone using a block of static IP address. I am guessing your line was never migrated to our newer system because we never saw proper DHCP traffic coming from your router, so instead of us chancing breaking your DSL connection we opted to leave you on our legacy server. This means you do have a static IP address, but that being said, you should be able to DHCP from it.
Your strange DHCP issues might be caused a configuration on your router called Stateful Packet Inspection which can sometimes cause a router to reject an IP address it has requested. I would look around in your router's webadmin to see if you have that option enabled anywhere and if so disable it. Alternatively another solution to the problem would be Statically Assigning your router to your IP address. Due to you being on our legacy dynamic system you would not have to worry about your IP address changing. I hope this helps answers your questions and resolves your issue and if not feel free to reply to this email or give tech support a call!
Daniel B. support@sonic.net
Sonic.net Support 707.547.3400
Santa Rosa, CA 95407 »www.sonic.net/support/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: BitBucket
To: tech Sonic.net
Sent: Saturday, July 18, 2009 19:01
Subject: DHCP requests, lease times
Hi:
I'm trying to debug a problem with disconnects between my router and the internet.
At the moment I'm examining my router log. It shows that it is requesting a new lease from sonic.net every 30 minutes. The ip I receive is granted with a lease time of 3600 (seconds, I think), or 1 hour. It's unclear even on this timetable why the router should be breaking the connection every 30 minutes when the lease itself runs an hour.
1. Do routers perhaps attempt to renew a lease 30 minutes before expiration, as part of some standardized protocol?
2. Is there some reason sonic.net issues the lease for only 60 minutes, as opposed to 24 hours, say?
3. If I have a static ip (I was under the impression that my account billing statement said dynamic ip), is this the default answer somehow to a DHCP address?
I realize I can set the router to Static IP and do away with this DHCP problem. But if you could clarify this problem I would appreciate it.
-- Roy Zider
System:
-----------
Sonic.net ADSL account, ip 69.12.241.225
Briteport 8120 modem, bridge mode
D-Link DIR-825 router Rev B1
WAN connection: Dynamic IP (DHCP)
Windows Server 2003
utorrent 1.8.3
Recent log output:
-----------------
Jul 18 16:34:03 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 16:34:03 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 16:34:03 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 16:34:03 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 16:04:02 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 16:04:02 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 16:04:02 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 16:04:02 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 15:34:03 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 15:04:02 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 15:04:02 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 15:04:02 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 15:04:02 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 14:34:01 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 14:34:01 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:59 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:59 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:57 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:55 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:54 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:53 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:51 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:51 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:49 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:47 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:46 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:45 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:43 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:43 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:41 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:39 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:39 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:37 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:33:35 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:27:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 14:27:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 14:27:28 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 14:27:28 info DHCP Release WAN IP address = 0.0.0.0
Jul 18 14:27:28 info Unicasting a release of 69.12.241.225 to 76.191.253.96
Jul 18 14:23:31 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 14:23:31 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:31 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:29 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:27 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:27 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:25 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:23 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:23 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:22 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:19 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:19 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:17 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:15 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:15 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:14 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:11 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:11 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:09 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:07 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:06 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:04 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:23:03 info Sending discover...
Jul 18 14:22:33 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 14:22:33 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 14:22:33 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 14:22:33 info DHCP Release WAN IP address = 0.0.0.0
Jul 18 14:22:33 info Unicasting a release of 69.12.241.225 to 76.191.253.96
Jul 18 14:03:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 14:03:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 14:03:29 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 14:03:28 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 13:33:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 13:33:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 13:33:29 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 13:33:29 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 13:03:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 13:03:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 13:03:28 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 13:03:28 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 12:33:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 12:33:29 DIR-82Jul 18 12: info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 12:33:29 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 12:03:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 12:03:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 12:03:28 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 12:03:28 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 11:33:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 11:33:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 11:33:29 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 11:33:28 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 11:03:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 11:03:29 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 11:03:29 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 11:03:29 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 10:33:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 10:33:28 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 10:33:28 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 10:33:28 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 09:52:13 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 09:52:13 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 09:52:13 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
Jul 18 09:52:13 info Lease of 69.12.241.225 obtained, lease time 3600
Jul 18 09:10:59 info using nameserver 208.201.224.11#53
Jul 18 09:10:59 info using nameserver 208.201.224.33#53
Jul 18 09:10:59 info reading /etc/resolv.conf
--
Some days it's not worth chewing through the straps. |
