Have to constantly renew DHCP lease

I was having a similar problem. Only on wifi, no problems with wired.

Changing IPv6 from Automatic to Local only seems to have solved the problem.

More details:

MacBookPro from 2008 or 2009.

I had an Asus wifi router before and never had problems with it.

Recently changed ISP and got a new wifi router and the problems started.

I was running Snow Leopard.

Upgraded to Mavericks in the hope to solve the problem but it didn't.

After reading this thread I started by changing the IPv6 configuration (Network preferences > Wifi > Advanced > TCP/IP > IPv6) from "Automatic" to "Local only". I was a bit skeptical about this solution, but so far it has been stable and I have been using it for several hours without loosing connection... (before it would probably not last longer than 30-40 min before having to renew DHCP)

Hope this might be of use for someone else having the same problem that might end up on this thread like I did.

I might have jump the gun here... It has happened again a couple of times today, though it seems to be happening quite less often than before... Although I can no longer be sure if it's due to the change in the IPv6 config or not...

I'll post again once I've found more consistent results...

Sorry to resurrect an older thread everyone, but I have been experiencing this issue for a couple months even after the brand new OSx El Capitan, and nothing in this forum seemed to resolve it. So with that being said, I called Tech support of my modem and they solved it for me and I would like to share just in case anyone else is reading this thread with no luck 🙂

So I have a Netgear C6300 Cable Modem with Comcast, and I was constantly experiencing the Renew DHCP Lease issue randomly, whether coming back from sleep or just sitting there. We have four Macbook Air's, Four iPhones, One iMAC, an Epson Printer, a first gen wii, an xbox 360, and two xbox ones connected to the Router/ Modem so you can see my need for the dual band and a modem that can handle 100mbps+.

For what it's worth, I did not have any real issues with the iPhones or the Xbox during this problem, only with the computers. And the reason why is because the phones tend to stay connected to the wifi 100% of the time, so there is no slight disconnect/ reconnect conflict present. Only when the phones are turned off then on, or enter airplane mode or low power mode do they tend to get confused and have to be renewed. The xboxs' for the most part stay off until you want to play them, and everytime they turn on they renew their IP automatically so there was never an issue with them. Just thought i'd add that.

Anyway, the first couple months went by with no issue, then it randomly did the IP disconnect. I searched and searched and to no avail I gave up and called Tech support. He had it solved (permanently) within ten minutes.

So something I didn't tell you guys before because I didn't think it mattered when I did it at the time, was that months ago (around the same time the problems began, of course I made no correlation) I had to reset the modem back to factory settings because I lost my modem login(I changed it from the factory login "admin" and "password" for some reason). I wanted to change something or look into something. I forget why i needed to get back into it but I digress. My family and I are huge Game Of Thrones fans, so naturally when I first set up the modem I named the 5gz SSID: House Targaryen, and the 2.4gz SSID: House Stark. Cool right? Well this ended up being my downfall.

Apparently a cardinal sin of setting up a WAN is if you have to make changes to the modem after initial setup, they prefer it if you do not use the same network (SSID) names. Remember when I said I had to factory reset the modem? Well when I did I naturally renamed the SSID's the same thing I had them at before and all my devices were getting confused. They thought the SSID they were connected to before were the exact same ones they had always connected to, but when you delete and rename an SSID they change ever so slightly (even if they are the same). I'm sure programmer's could enlighten us as to why but anyways, he simply had me change the names(SSID's) and passwords for those SSID's to something else, and just to be safe he had me add "5G" at the end of whatever name i gave the 5gz SSID.

So if you guys are having issues with this and nothing above is solving it, try thinking back and remembering if you had made changes to the modem at any point and you gave your SSID(s) the same name as before (no matter how long ago it might've been). Simply changing them (and the passwords too!), could be your saving grace.

Hope this helps!

-Mike

Facing this problems for over a month. Every time I'm at home, my work laptop (and ONLY my work laptop) drops the connection every 15 minutes for about 2 minutes. Hitting "Renew DHCP Lease" would reconnect instantly. I considered writing a script to ping google and renew lease if no response.

I had an idea though!! After reading about the conflicting IP addresses that seem to cause this issue, I looked at my ip address and it was xxx.xxx.xxx.2 and the router was xxx.xxx.xxx.1. So I went in the router settings and had the IP addresses start at .3 instead of .2. This gave me an error and I couldn't connect to the wifi for a while. Even when it was back it wouldn't connect. I reset my wifi and clicked renew DHCP lease several times until voila! I was auto-assigned xxx.xxx.xxx.5 and problem is gone (so far).

False alarm: NOT SOLVED. Issue returned.

Hey everyone,

I tried every fix on here and other forums, but still no luck for me, even with fully updated software. I wrote a program that basically automatically renews the DHCP when the wifi drops. For example, according to my program, I've had 388 failures in the last 91 hours, and did not notice a single one. This program will need to be customized for your SSID, so email me at mac.wifi.fix@gmail.com and I can get you set up as fast as possible!

Not solved, the problem returned after an hour.

So I wrote a script that definitely solved my problem

#begin of script

while(true)

do

echo "Renewing: $(date)"

echo "add State:/Network/Interface/en0/RefreshConfiguration temporary" | sudo scutil

sleep 5s

done

#end of script

If anyone want to try

Save the script above to a file, for example renew.sh (you can type vi renew.sh from yout terminal. Press 'I' to change it to insert mode and paste the content. Use 'Esc', and ':wq' to quit and save it)

chmod +x renew.sh (to make the shell script runnable)

sudo ./renew.sh (to run the script)

I have this really frustrating problem on my mid-2014, 13" pro currently running 10.11.6. Not 100% sure but I feel like it started after updating to 10.11.3 or sth and I wasn't lucky to find a solution after applying all the tips mentioned here, receiving over 5 support calls and finally visiting the genius (?) bar -- they have "tested" my device for 6 days and I was later told that it works like a charm! The problem occurs everywhere: at home, work, cafes, airports, etc; sometimes every second and sometime once a month; while other Wi-Fi devices including my iPhone don't have any issue with the connection. I will visit the genius bar tomorrow again hoping that they will come up with a solution and in case they cannot, I'm afraid I may punch this glorious looking retina screen so hard and definitely refrain from even thinking of getting any other Apple device after all these years with my iPod, iPhone, iPad and this goddamned Macbook!!!

For anyone having these issues, I highly recommend OSXDaily's fix for wifi issues. You can view it here: http://osxdaily.com/2016/09/22/fix-wi-fi-problems-macos-sierra/

They also have versions for previous versions of OS X / MacOS.

I've used this fix on several machines for customers, and it has fixed the weirdest wifi problems that you would think had no connection to plists. I've also used it on my own machine, and it not only fixed weird issues with a 3rd party program after my upgrade to MacOS Sierra, it also has sped up my browsing tremendously.

I was having issues with the Sierra upgrade, it would work elsewhere but at home always dropping - requiring the renewal of the DHCP lease every 10 seconds. After hours of online work (doing the fixes based on this thread and others) and a trip to the Apple Store where they scratched their heads, I updated my router's (Netgear) firmware which seemed to do the trick. Knock on wood, it has only been 6 hours since 🙂

I know this is an old post, but I had been struggling with this lately as well and wanted to share my experience and what I did to (hopefully) resolve it.

I'm using a 2015 MacBook on macOS Sierra 10.12.4 and a Time Capsule. The Time Capsule is bridged, not handling DHCP (that's being handled by my ISP's gateway). The Time Capsule just broadcasts wifi. After a few minutes of browsing the internet on my MacBook, websites would suddenly become unresponsive. Heading to Settings>Network>Wifi>Advanced>TCPIP and hitting "Renew DHCP Lease" would buy me a few more minutes of internets. But then it would go away again, until I renew DHCP lease again.

I have another MacBook, an iMac, two iPhones, two iPads....nothing else seemed to have this issue. Just my 2015 MacBook Pro.

I had rebooted everything. Shut down my gateway, my Time Capsule, the Macbook...bring everything back up one at at time. Hitting Renew DHCP Lease was giving me back the exact same IP every single time.

I finally logged into the Time Capsule itself via Airport Utility, went to Internet, and hit Renew DHCP Lease at that level. Doing this gave me a new IP address on the MacBook, and fingers crossed, my internet hasn't dropped since then. I had the constant feeling that there was something up with the IP address my MacBook was getting assigned. Perhaps a duplicate IP on the network? Not sure. But renewing the DHCP lease on the Time Capsule itself appears to have resolved the issue for the time being. I'll report back if I continue to encounter the issue further.

marcusdiddle wrote:

I know this is an old post, but I had been struggling with this lately as well and wanted to share my experience and what I did to (hopefully) resolve it.

I'm using a 2015 MacBook on macOS Sierra 10.12.4 and a Time Capsule. The Time Capsule is bridged, not handling DHCP (that's being handled by my ISP's gateway). The Time Capsule just broadcasts wifi. After a few minutes of browsing the internet on my MacBook, websites would suddenly become unresponsive. Heading to Settings>Network>Wifi>Advanced>TCPIP and hitting "Renew DHCP Lease" would buy me a few more minutes of internets. But then it would go away again, until I renew DHCP lease again.

I have another MacBook, an iMac, two iPhones, two iPads....nothing else seemed to have this issue. Just my 2015 MacBook Pro.

I had rebooted everything. Shut down my gateway, my Time Capsule, the Macbook...bring everything back up one at at time. Hitting Renew DHCP Lease was giving me back the exact same IP every single time.

I finally logged into the Time Capsule itself via Airport Utility, went to Internet, and hit Renew DHCP Lease at that level. Doing this gave me a new IP address on the MacBook, and fingers crossed, my internet hasn't dropped since then. I had the constant feeling that there was something up with the IP address my MacBook was getting assigned. Perhaps a duplicate IP on the network? Not sure. But renewing the DHCP lease on the Time Capsule itself appears to have resolved the issue for the time being. I'll report back if I continue to encounter the issue further.

When you say your ISP's gateway, do you mean the ISP provided cable modem/router (DSL modem/router; or Fiber modem/router) they either install in your home, or give to you for you to self-install in your home? That is what I would expect, but I do not want to assume, as your wording is unclear.

It is possible you are directly connecting to your ISP without a home router (neither yours, nor one from your ISP), and that would be very unusual these days. Not impossible, jus t unusual.

With respect to DHCP. Sometimes a DHCP server will be more friended to a client that sets up a "DHCP Client ID" which is also composed of just letters and numbers (no spaces, no special characters).

System Preferences -> Network -> WiFi -> Advanced -> TCP/IP -> DHCP Client ID

And put something in there like: My2015Macbook

Not too long. Just letters and numbers. No spaces. No special characters

In additions, most DHCP servers will always assigne the same IP address to a returning client that has a DHCP Client ID.

I checked my Airport Extreme router, and it does not have a way to specify a DHCP Client ID. So I'm not sure what you could do for that.

Another thing I have found that sometimes helps is with networking, is to put IPv6 into "Link-Level only". I do this from my Macs as well as my Aiport Extreme router. IPv6 is going to eventually start being used more, as IPv4 completely runs out of addresses (which in some areas is the case), however, IPv6 has been ignored by many ISP, Router vendors, and operating system networking stacks.

Yes, may of these say they support IPv6, but it is not well tested through the entire data chain, so limiting IPv6 to Link-Level only minimized any connection issues that may occur because one link in the IPv6 chain is weak.

Having gone thru the exact same experience as everyone else in this thread, here's what I did to get my internet to work again:

1. Go to "System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> TCP/IP" (like everyone else suggested)

2. Under "Configure IPv4", choose the option Off, essentially turning this config off completely.

3. Click OK, and then click Apply when you're back in the "Network" tab.

4. Go back to "Advanced -> TCP/IP". Reset it to whatever you had previous; if in doubt, just select "Using DHCP".

5. Repeat 3.

The internet connection should be stable now! Good luck folks

Well there is a bug in Lion that a lot of people are complaining about. I suspect this is on WiFi, correct?

Or does it happen when you are connected by Ethernet cable also?