mac won't retain dhcp address

jimfixit

Registered
I'm working now to collect specifics such as model of mac notebook and OS but here are the general symptoms I'm seeing with wireless networking:

Mac shows it's got a solid connection and signal to the linksys wireless-G model WAP. That Linksys connects back to a Netopia DSL router provided by the local telco. They manage it so I don't get any say in how it's set up.

What happens on the mac is, it will get a DHCP assigned address but within just a few hours, it will no longer talk. It can't even ping itself on that address which tells me it has released it for some reason. If I either set it to static then back again or if I just do the RENEW DHCP from the TCP/IP configuration page, it takes right off.

But I can set a wintel based PC right next to the Mac, get a DHCP address and run for days, never a hiccup.

The DHCP protocol calls for the station to start renewing the IP address halfway through the lease time. The provider confirms the lease time is 3 days. The mac releases and doesn't renew within just a few hours, yet it continues to show it's MAC address in the Linksys WAP information page as being connected.

We have layer 1 and 2 but not layer 3, or at least Layer 3 doesn't want to stick around.

Anyone seen this? Anything I can change? By the way giving it a static IP doesn't work at all...can't get connected period then. On a PC I'd be reinstalling the TCP/IP stack by now....

I am a mac neophyte. I know networking, I fumble with PC's I stumble with Mac.
 
In a general proposition, Macs do not have problems with DHCP. Furthermore, a bad connection should not force a change in IP-address. The computer should have its old IP-address when it reconnects. That begs the question: Is your computer properly setup to acquire your IP-address via DHCP?
 
I finally got the user to give me their specs on the unit: MacBook Air, 13 inch, 2.13 Ghz intel processor, 4 GB model. It is running Mac OS X 10.6.6.

As to is dhcp correctly configured, maybe I missed something but what is there to do except select to use DHCP rather than choose to set it manually? If I can solve the problem by releasing and renewing dhcp I can say fairly certainly dhcp is working, it just doesn't hold the IP address, and I can't say why.

thank you for helping.
 
Back
Top