ip problem

irishguy

i have powernet from chorus and every hour or so it stops working for about 5 secs which is realy anoying in games and other stuff. i noticed when having a look at my ipconfig that i only have a lease on my ip address for about an hour, so i was wondering if there is a connection between the two? and if so why does it do this.

irishguy

*Bump*

Renton

Yes, thats defo a problem. Its silly infact.

a 1 hour lease on ip's from the dhcp server ? thats absolutly f*cking absurd. You should get onto chorus, make sure you get a guy on the phone who knows what hes talking about, and get them to fix it.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

It's not really absurd, Chorus will have a limited amount of IP addresses to dish out and they'll have clients connecting and disconnecting all the time. If they left the lease time at 24 hours they'd probably run out before the end of the day. 1 hour is a bit low though, it should really 2 or 3.

Also the way DHCP works it'll renew the lease half way through the lease time (30 mins). It does this with a DHCPRequest message and the server will respond with a DHCPAck message. The client should still have the IP address during the renewel process, so there should be no loss of service.

Are you getting the same IP address every time it drops? If your getting a different address then the renewel process isn't working.

cableskeptic

I am not an expert on IP network setup so I'm looking for advice here as to how Chorus could improve. Is this thinking correct:

In the example above the subnet is defined as 217.78.4.190 with the default gateway as 217.78.4.190 (convention says it should be 217.78.4.191) and that leaves only 64 unique addresses on the subnet (and presumably this is why they chose to lease an IP address for a certain period?).

Why not set up their own private Class B or Class C network using something like 10.0.0.0 which would give them access to loads of IP addresses? The only restriction would be that they would have to warn users with private home networks what IP addresses to avoid. If this is possible then the idea of IP leasing could be removed and the concept of 'always-on' could be implemented without much hassle.

cableskeptic

Ooops .....

After consulting an IP book:

With a subnet mask of 255.255.255.192 Chorus have split a Class-C network into 4 subnets and by convention the default gateway address should be 217.78.4.1, 217.78.4.65, 217.78.4.129 and 217.78.4.193.

The IP address assigned in the example is 217.78.4.133 with the default gateway adress 217.78.4.190 (goes against the convention but what the hell if it works).

So I am still interested in my original question: why can't Chorus setup a private network where they could have unrestricted access to many more IP addresses?

moist

Originally posted by cableskeptic

The IP address assigned in the example is 217.78.4.133 with the default gateway adress 217.78.4.190 (goes against the convention but what the hell if it works).

Convention smention!
Your gateway can be whatever the hell you like!
Generally people choose (network num +1) or (broadcast -1).
And I've actually seen more of the latter, though I would probably choose the first
as that was what I started using in the begining.
It just makes it easier for people to remember if all gateways on the network are chosen the same way.

So I am still interested in my original question: why can't Chorus setup a private network where they could have unrestricted access to many more IP addresses?

People want real IP addresses for many reasons, so they can run services on their machines
if they like, so they can access them externally, etc.
Also a number of things tend to break when their behind NAT/PAT, such as online games.

Mind you I thought that chorus were going to give rfc1918 IP's by default and give real ones
if the customer so wishes, if their having problems of something.
Though if they don't use the IP's they have, their not going to get any more off RIPE, so they
may as well use them


<EDIT> Meh! silly vb code </EDIT>

cableskeptic

Originally posted by moist


People want real IP addresses for many reasons, so they can run services on their machines
if they like, so they can access them externally, etc.
Also a number of things tend to break when their behind NAT/PAT, such as online games.

Mind you I thought that chorus were going to give rfc1918 IP's by default and give real ones
if the customer so wishes, if their having problems of something.
Though if they don't use the IP's they have, their not going to get any more off RIPE, so they
may as well use them

It seems to me that the rfc1918 solution is much better (from the user point of view) than the current Chorus implementation which leases 'real' IP addresses for a small time period. It would also give Chorus more flexibility and improve their network security.

IMO if people want 'real' IP addresses then they should be prepared to pay extra. Same is true if they want to run externally accessible services like web servers (users should pay for the extra traffic they generate above the 'normal' user).

On the point about online games not working: surely the gateway can be set up to translate private addresses to external addresses and routed to the games server? Why does NAT tend to break certain certain applications?

moist

Originally posted by cableskeptic

It seems to me that the rfc1918 solution is much better (from the user point of view) than the current Chorus implementation which leases 'real' IP addresses for a small time period. It would also give Chorus more flexibility

The short lease times shouldn't make a differance, once your online your machine should renew
the lease before it actually runs out, so you should not notice anything.

and improve their network security.

Don't let _anyone_ fool you into believing that using private addresses behind a NAT box will
give you any any extra security.
Sure, you get a bit of obscurity, however, obscurity != obscurity.

IMO if people want 'real' IP addresses then they should be prepared to pay extra. Same is true if they want to run externally accessible services like web servers (users should pay for the extra traffic they generate above the 'normal' user).

Well your not actually allowed charge for IP addresses.
I'm sure they had a good reason for using real IP's.
It really shouldn't make any differance that the lease is only an hour, it should renew
without you noticing.
And sure if chorus do run out of IP's, they will just get more from RIPE.

On the point about online games not working: surely the gateway can be set up to translate private addresses to external addresses and routed to the games server? Why does NAT tend to break certain certain applications?

Yes, thats in essance what NAT does.
Games tend to break because they use UDP which is not a connection orientated protocol.

TacT

looks like chorus need to get the finger out and grab a few more class c's and do some math