I can't speak to how all routers implement it, but from what I know of the protocol, it would be a poor design choice to allow re-use of IPs before the lease expires. The problem is that the lease time information is sent to the client, so it's also aware of how long it can go before it needs to re-request the IP. If your router started handing out non-expired IPs to new devices, then you have the potential of multiple devices active on the network with the same IP. That's really not a good idea.
If you consistently have more active devices than DHCP IPs available, then the only real solution is to increase the number of IPs available, or decrease the number of devices. If, however, the number of devices is lower than the number of IPs, but new devices can't get IPs since the leases haven't expired yet, then you can either increase the number of IPs, or decrease the lease time to get the IPs to cycle more frequently. Lloyd Brown Systems Administrator Fulton Supercomputing Lab Brigham Young University http://marylou.byu.edu On 01/29/2013 10:28 AM, Wade Shearer wrote: > So you're saying that they are always exclusive within the lease period? Are > there any routers where they aren't exclusive? /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
