Have to constantly renew DHCP lease

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?

It could be hard to say what's causing the problem since you don't know exactly when it started (before or after the upgrade).

Do you have any other computers or devices that work when the computer can't connect?

What modem and router type or you using?

If the firmware updated on those?

You could create a new user account to test and see if the connection issue persists.

I would definitely check the firmware on the router for upgrades.

If you think it happened after upgrading to 10.7.3, you might try downloading the ComboUpdate from the Apple site and reapply over the existing OS if the new user account fails the test.

You can also add the DNS address to the network settings under the advacned tab. The address you put would depend on where the DNS is obtained from. If from the router, then you would put the router address address here since the router itself would contain the outside DNS settings. You can see that by looking at the network settings for the router and DNS address. Most DNS manuel input for the outside servers would be put into the router settings, not in the computer network settings. Also, make sure the router setting in the network setting is not an address being distributed by the DHCP server in the router settings. Also lease settings should be set in the router and should not have to be renewed by you manually.

I'm having the exact same issue in both wireless and with ethernet. Its actually more prevelant with the wired connection. It has gotten to the point that I must manually refresh my DHCP lease before each time I access a new web page or before I check my email. I have replaced my router and modem and the problem has persisted. My other devices on the network don't share this affliction.

MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHZ i7, 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 OS 10.7.3

i used to have problems with my wifi to, it used to drop out all the time on my apple tv ps3 and mac on snow leopard but i found a fix and that was to access my router settings by typing my ip address into safari (where the web page address normally goes) and once in my router setting changing the channel number of my wi fi from auto to a random number between 1 and 15. I found if there are other wifi routers in the same area as u then sometimes they clash on what channel they broadcast on, try each number between 1 and 15 untill u have a stable connection, dont know if this will help but ive had zero connection problems since

I have the same problem. I have to constantly renew the DCHP lease. Web access will freeze and once I renew the DCHP lease it starts again. I also use a MacBook Pro running the latest ver. Lion. This problem sems to have started within the past 2 weeks. I use this same MacBook Pro at my work and I do not have the problem there. So, for me anyway, it is obviously caused by my home setup. I use a UBEE modem and Linksys switch to distribute Internet at home.

I have the same issue that every 10-15min my connection freezes-drops. Gotta renew leased DHCP to get it working again, only to have to do everything again after other 10-15minutes- Only thing it's i'm on SnowLeopard 10.6.8. I've been experiencing this really annoying problem for 2-3 weeks now. Before everything worked flawlessly and it's not an ISP related problem, as my flatmate using crappy win 8 doesn't have any problems or whatsoever.

I have the exact same problem with both wi-fi and ethernet connections and it's driving me crazy!

It only started after I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. It is really very frustrating; as a web designer, I now have to spend much of my day clicking on the "Renew DHCP Lease" button in the TCP/IP pane in the Network control panel.

My iPhone has no trouble at all accessing the same wi-fi network. My old G4 tower Mac running Leopard has no trouble either. It's just my intel iMac with 10.7.4.

I can usually figure out what's causing this sort of glitch but so far this has me stumped. :-/

Anyone get ony other thoughts or ideas on any differences in Lion's networking architecture that might be the cause of this?

one thing ive noticed coz im having a prob with safari now sometimes it dont load and renew DHCP lease makes it go again is i have itunes open constantly on my mac and have got itune match running for my music im wondering if this could be something to do with it as nvr had the prob before i got itunes match?

Same here. I'm running a Mac Pro tower with both wired and wi-fi connections and I have to renew my DHCP lease every 15 minutes or so. I've tried manual addresses, setting a 10 second ping to keep connections alive, etc.

Up to date on software and this issue did not develop for me either till 10.7.4. Other hardware on the same network does not have this problem.