My ISP just changed ownership and revamped everything,

they made a bid deal about dhcp, like it had to be used, etc.


I just checked my dhcp leasetime and it's set like this


LEASETIME=4294967295
RENEWALTIME=259200
REBINDTIME=3758096383


How does this work?

does this mean I will have the same ip address for 119 years?

Or could they change it in three days?

That is an unusually long amount of time to extend a DHCP lease. The Renewal time is a little shorter (at 72 hours).

In a normal setup, the DHCP server polls the clients at the half-life of the lease time. If the client responds, the lease is renewed. This process goes on and on until the client doesn't respond, then a new IP address is picked up and the whole process starts over again.

It's possible the ISP is still 'optimizing' their DHCP settings on the server side. At this point, it looks like you will have that IP address until your grandchildren are on the internet.

Ryan

that's what I thought.

I guess they want to keep the dhcp traffic down to a minimum