ARIN?

Sun Nov 8 20:10:36 UTC 1998

Andrea Di Lecce wrote:

> Cable modem subscribers normally are not dynamically assigned IPs like
> dialups.  Besides, they are advertised as a constant connection, and a lot
> of people use it as such.

	I'm not intending to get involved in the one thing is better than
another argument, but I thought that some on the list would like to know
some facts about cable modems. I am a Road Runner customer, and I have
been in contact with a lot of other cable modem customers because of my
web page that explains how to get dhcp running with FreeBSD. 

	For RR I know for sure that different local cableco's do things
differently. Here, Time Warner (nee Southwestern) Cable is still pushing
their sad little marketing scheme of charging for a "static" IP, so they
have set up dhcp in such a way that every time they reboot a given dhcp
server it's pot luck on who gets what IP. And of course, the dhcp server
they are using doesn't listen to the dhcp client's request to be
reassigned the same IP. Fortunately they are now rebooting the servers
less often, about once a month. In the early days of the service it was
much more painful.

	Other RR locations do provide the dhcp equivalent of a static address,
which is usually a 50 year lease on that IP. Last I heard, the local
@Home provider issued that kind of lease, but I haven't been in touch
with many @Home customers outside of San Diego. Other cableco's have an
amalgam of the various different possibilities. Some don't use dhcp at
all, etc. etc. 

-- 
***           Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network          ***