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?

Peabody wrote:

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

On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 08:16:00 -0600, Peabody <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

<snip>
>
>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.

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?

>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.

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?

Johann Beretta says...

>> 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.

> 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?

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

>> 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.

> 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?

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.

On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:31:50 -0600, Peabody <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:
<snip>
>
>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.

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.

>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.

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.
>
>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.

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.
>
>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.
>
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.

Johann Beretta says...

> 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.

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

> 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.

Yes that's my understanding.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

Yes, that should work.

>> 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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.