There is a vast range of information of every kind on the internet. Thus knowing what is DHCP lease time is a must for you. To get our hands on that valuable information, we need to scour the internet. But if you belong to the much famed IT-field, you would surely know one thing, if not many. Surfing, internally, is not as easy as typing and clicking enter.

Getting the resultant information involves jumping to and fro between sites with different IP addresses. Has anyone ever thought how all these websites may allow all these IP addresses? No? 

dhcp lease time
dhcp lease time

As we can guess, formerly, everything was pretty straightforward. There were a little number of devices, which were given addresses by the experts manually. Then as the number doubled and tripled and increased even beyond that, manually doing it became impractical and nearly impossible.

This is where DHCP and DHCP lease time come into play. Short for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, and you can very clearly tell it is a protocol. (A set of pre-decided rules).

The DHCP server designates the Addresses on its own, without any human intervention whatsoever. This is, of course, done by its server part. This may be a dedicated system or one that may act as a server.

Sounds easy-peasy? Oh, it isn’t.

The catch is, each user gets an Ip address only for a minimal indefinite period.

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Unveiling DHCP Lease Time

The period during which a user gets to keep or hold on to a specific IP address is its DHCP lease time. You know, it is kind of like the renting system. The IP address is rented for that particular period until the one using, leaves it.

I shall give you a ubiquitous example when your internet is not working fine, you reconnect to your wifi, right? Incidentally, when you do this, you have designated a new Ip address. Every time you connect to the internet, the Ip changes. 

Set DHCP Lease Time
Set DHCP Lease Time

To check it out, you can check your IP address, reconnect and then recheck it. You’ll get the proof. The address you get, you can maintain it till you connect with the network again or till you reach your assigned DHCP lease time. Whichever happens first.

The case I dictated above is familiar with the majority of people, as they use Public IP addresses. These may subject to change. The ones on whom the DHCP is not applicable are the static ones. Hence institutions and organizations privately use this.

Now the question you should ask is From where and how the addresses gets reserved. The DHCP server has a collection of resources from which the lectures designated.

It automatically handles deallocating the addresses. They are assigned to the newly joining users.

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The Whole Process Related To Topic

The whole process related to DHCP lease time follows a particular pre-decided arrangement. I am going to explain it to you below:

  • When a user newly enters the network, it has no Address.
  • In the usual flow of protocol, it gets one.
  • After that, when it uses it up, reaches half of its allotted DHCP lease time, it tries to get it renewed. So, it can keep using the address it was given earlier.
  • If it gets renewed, then the user keeps utilizing it. Because the one it already has.
  • If, for some unseen reasons, it doesn’t, then it tries to acquire any available address and live out its DHCP lease time with that.

Enough about DHCP lease time, how do you know what or how much it is? In fact, how do you know what amount is ideal? What should you fix it to be? I have tried to answer this very formidable query in a much simpler way.

Deciding What Suitable DHCP Lease Time Is?

Starting with personal tools for household usage. The DHCP lease time is usually set to a day, why? Because in a day, your device may enter or leave the network a couple of times. For instance, when you turn on your computer or when after power comes on and wifi gets reconnected.

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But it would not be a bad idea if you set it for extended intervals like a week. The reason being that the devices that reside in the network don’t increase or decrease frequently. The number remains constant most of the time.

Set DHCP Lease Time
Set DHCP Lease Time

Another consideration here can be the type of devices, the ones with wires/cable for operation are stable and may have up to 7 days of DHCP lease time ideally. While the non-wired ones may have a shorter one, say from 15 hours to a day. Also, there is no point in designating longer DHCP lease times.

The ones, on the other hand, which are connected only momentarily, that too in patches. It can do with shorter lease time as they often leave e.g., when you have guests over at your place for a gathering or a party, they get an IP address on “rent” for shorter intervals of time.

Conclusion

So that was all about DHCP, and the ideal time it should have. It is beneficial and handy to have the nearly appropriate one as resources these days are as precious as money itself.

You can take your knowledge about it. DHCP lease time up a notch and apply it by reading this article.

So read on and don’t forget to visit us for more such knowledgeable and useful articles.

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