Re: Cable modem/dhchp


Subject: Re: Cable modem/dhchp
From: Darron Froese (darron@fudgehead.com)
Date: Sun Oct 03 1999 - 19:23:34 MDT


On Sun, 3 Oct 1999, Jim Cole wrote:

> This may or may not be helpful for your particular case, but in general
> people might want to check on the precise policy for IP address allocation
> with cable modem. My connection is through TCI/AT&T@Home and they apply
> DHCP to distribute IP addresses, however they always give you the same
> IP address. So they are actually assigning static IP addresses and just
> doing it through DHCP as a convenience to users with officially supported
> OS's that don't want/need to know anything about IP addresses. If your
> provider uses similar policies, you can just figure out the IP, drop it
> in as if it were static and be done with it. My two IP's have been working
> fine this way for the last 9 months.

You want to be careful though - some providers don't take kindly to you
taking a static IP - even if it's been yours for months.

A friend of mine had been given the same IP for a new months so he decided
to make it static on his ydl install. It worked fine until one day his
modem stopped working (He had been leaving his machine on 24x7 too keep
that address.).

He then called in and asked what was going on and got yelled at by the
@home person for about 15 minutes. He wasn't too assertive and so he just
took it and didn't complain. Supposedly, they had given that IP out to
somebody for a few months (even though it was still in the pool of DHCP
addresses) and 'couldn't figure out why this customer's machine wasn't
working properly."

Why they couldn't figure out that somebody already had that IP for a few
months is beyond me.....

Darron
darron@fudgehead.com
<http://darron.odi.ca/>



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