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Buffalo HP router - leases

I've been using my new Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 router for a couple weeks now, and have been extremely pleased with it. I still get a pretty good connection out on the back porch, which is not that far, but goes through a lot of walls.

But the other night it reset the connection to both my desktop, which is wired to it, and my laptop on wireless. I thought something was wrong, but finally figured out that their leases had expired.

It appears that unlike a direct connection through the modem, the leases to the router survive all the devices being powered down overnight. So right now, for example, having powered up everything this morning (Thursday), my desktop shows that the 48-hour lease was obtained Tuesday night, and will expire tonight. That's what it said last night when I shut down.

What I'm used to on a direct connection is getting a new lease every time I boot up, and then Windows renewing the lease mid-way in its life so that it never actually expires. But that's not happening with the router for some reason.

Well, this is not a major problem, but it does mean that at lease expiration time my connection to the internet is broken for a minute or so, which I would rather avoid. Short of flashing to DD-WRT, which I don't want to do, is there an easy fix for this?

Reply to
Peabody
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Hi, Why worry? Lease is automatically renewed. At least with my ISP. You can manually renew it as well.

Reply to
Tony Hwang

When you mention leases, are these the leases your router is handing out to machines on your side of the connection (i.e. is it acting as a DHCP server), or is it passing lease requests to your ISP?

According to DHCP specifications, when a machine is powered up, it should ask for a renewal to the IP address it had previously, and if that address is not currently in use, the DHCP server should grant the request and allow it to continue using said address for another lease period.

Is that what is happening in your situtation?

Reply to
Johann Beretta

The former. The WAN side appears to be completely separate.

No. Well, it's getting the same IP address, but it is also restoring the original lease period instead of startng over. Then if the computer is on when the lease finally expires, I lose my connection to the internet for a minute or so while a new lease is granted. And, you know, if I'm in the middle of a file transfer, or chat, that can be a problem.

It doesn't renew mid-term for some reason. I think it should do that. And it shouldn't shut me down while it renews.

I've found that I am able to get it to start over by doing an "ipconfig /release" and rebooting. So maybe the solution is to figure out how to do a shutdown script that does the release. I'm kinda surprised XP doesn't automatically release as part of normal shutdown, but apparently not.

The other option is to turn off DHCP in the router and just fix the IPs for the two computers. Or, leave DHCP running, but set the bottom of the range to the first number above the other two. The hope would be that with fixed IPs there wouldn't be any leases on the LAN side. I need to try that.

Reply to
Peabody

Ah. So if I understand correctly, say you shut your computer down for the night, and the lease showed 8 hrs remaining just prior to shutdown.. When you boot up the next morning, it still shows 8 hours, instead of either the full period or whatever time should be left taking into account the "off" time.

You are correct. DHCP specifies a machine should ask for a renewal when 50% of the lease has expired. The machine is also expected to ask again for a renewal at (I think) 25% remaining, and then more frequently as the lease time gets closer to expiration.

As for the broken connection period, it should at most be a couple of seconds as the machine switches from one IP address to another. A sophisticated router would handle that seamlessly, but a cheapy consumer one, well. I would suspect that a short term disconnect is to be expected. but only for a second or two. But only if said IP address is to be handed out to a different machine. In your scenario this shouldn't come into play.

It shouldn't release when it shuts down. That is normal operation. But, it should renegotiate the lease on bootup, and you _should_ get either a renewal of your lease period or a new ip address with a full lease period.

A semi workaround would be to extend the lease period in the router to say.. a year or so.. That's a dirty hack to be sure, but it would also be a pretty easy fix, and then you'd only have to deal with a disconnect 1x a year.

That would also work. a fixed ip address has no lease period.

Perhaps an updated firmware for your router exists? This sounds like a pure firmware problem, and I would suspect you aren't the only one experiancing it.

Reply to
Johann Beretta

No, it shows the amount remaining from the original lease. So it would be about to expire.

Yes that's my understanding.

No it shouldn't, particularly since all the IPs are staying the same, both WAN and LAN. It's just adding more time. So there shouldn't be any break at all. It appears the router is completely restarting on each LAN lease renewal.

What I always got before on a direction connection to the modem was a new 24-hour lease, even if the IP stays the same. I don't know why that isn't happening with the router.

Yes, that should work.

That's what I did. It looks like I'm going to need to forward ports anyway unless there's a mIRC version that includes UPNP, so that effectively solves the lease problem at the same time.

I already have the latest firmware. The only alternative is to flash to DD-WRT, but I tend to not have very good luck with stuff like that.

Anyway, the fixed IPs have solved the problem, so I'm gonna leave it that way.

Thanks for your help.

Reply to
Peabody

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