Ah sorry, it sounded like you had a fairly reliable unreliability to work with (multiple drops in a day, regularly), but as you say, that is too much compromise if it isn't every day.

Taking into account you may not get the answers you want from the ISP, how about you put another device in charge of the internal network (temporarily), and double NAT? Obviously a rubbish idea if your network is too complex with incoming ports etc. However it again might prove a point.

In reply to a post by fguk:

Being a bit old school myself, is it time for a process of elimination?

Agree. Old school too.

In reply to a post by brushton:

The problem with this approach is that the connection drops are sporadic, sometimes weeks apart, so I might never be able to pin it down to a specific device - it's trying to prove a negative

Yes I could turn off the WiFi and eliminate a bunch of devices, but that would compromise my setup and operation, and yet the same "how long do I leave it" problem exists.Crazy!

Nope, you are not thinking this through. You have been told "check any devices you have that could cause as DHCP interference", which may or may not be the cause, but to go any further with the ISP, you need to look into it. First thing is to cut all your dhcp leases to something ridiculously short and see whether the problem becomes more frequent.

And if that is inconclusive see if you have a dhcp lease table in the router. Keep an eye on what is running out of lease and see whether the problem arises shortly after the lease has run out. Or you could be proactive and put absolutely everything on to your LAN and go around them one by one and prompt them to renew their leases. A power recycle should do this. See whether this prompts your problem to recur.

In reply to a post by fguk:

Taking into account you may not get the answers you want from the ISP, how about you put another device in charge of the internal network (temporarily), and double NAT? Obviously a rubbish idea if your network is too complex with incoming ports etc. However it again might prove a point.

Or put another device on a network LAN connection with a dhcp server, but no other role in the network. Turn off the dhcp server on the main router. Check that you only have the one dhcp server initially, otherwise you might just replicate the problem with a new dhcp server.

In reply to a post by Bryer:

If the commands to disconnect are coming sporadically, it's likely to be a device that's rarely used within your home. If it was daily, it's something you use a lot of.

Are you able to think which devices you rarely turn on are rarely used but connected?

I've tried, but the drops happen at all hours of the day - and night! - and it happens independently of us doing anything, seeing it drop when, say, we turned something on, would be a piece of cake to identify

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by fguk:

Being a bit old school myself, is it time for a process of elimination?

Agree. Old school too.

In reply to a post by brushton:

The problem with this approach is that the connection drops are sporadic, sometimes weeks apart, so I might never be able to pin it down to a specific device - it's trying to prove a negative

Yes I could turn off the WiFi and eliminate a bunch of devices, but that would compromise my setup and operation, and yet the same "how long do I leave it" problem exists.Crazy!

Nope, you are not thinking this through. You have been told "check any devices you have that could cause as DHCP interference", which may or may not be the cause, but to go any further with the ISP, you need to look into it. First thing is to cut all your dhcp leases to something ridiculously short and see whether the problem becomes more frequent.

And if that is inconclusive see if you have a dhcp lease table in the router. Keep an eye on what is running out of lease and see whether the problem arises shortly after the lease has run out. Or you could be proactive and put absolutely everything on to your LAN and go around them one by one and prompt them to renew their leases. A power recycle should do this. See whether this prompts your problem to recur.

Ah OK, I was wondering if I should make the leases longer to reduce the requests, but this is an interesting way of proceeding. It's kind of odd (to me) that with a (standard) 1440 minute lease time and 30-40 devices this "interference" might be a problem

Thanks

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by fguk:

Taking into account you may not get the answers you want from the ISP, how about you put another device in charge of the internal network (temporarily), and double NAT? Obviously a rubbish idea if your network is too complex with incoming ports etc. However it again might prove a point.

Or put another device on a network LAN connection with a dhcp server, but no other role in the network. Turn off the dhcp server on the main router. Check that you only have the one dhcp server initially, otherwise you might just replicate the problem with a new dhcp server.

Interesting, hadn't thought of that. I have a spare Raspberry Pi or 2 kicking around, I think one of those might do the job

In reply to a post by brushton:

Ah OK, I was wondering if I should make the leases longer to reduce the requests, but this is an interesting way of proceeding. It's kind of odd (to me) that with a (standard) 1440 minute lease time and 30-40 devices this "interference" might be a problem

The difference between trying to make a problem go away and finding whether something is a problem so you can take targetted action.

Good luck!!

It's been quite unstable today (14 drops so far) without me doing anything on it. I'm building a Raspberry Pi DHCP server (using PiHole) but I'm just wondering if I can deduce anything from the DHCP remaining lease times if I reduce the standard value to, say, 30 minutes?

Does it tell us anything if some devices are still on a near-24-hour refresh after 30 minutes have expired?

(Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm star trekking with this )

In reply to a post by brushton:

Does it tell us anything if some devices are still on a near-24-hour refresh after 30 minutes have expired?

The dumb question is the one you don't ask ...

AIUI, the clients own the lease for the time they were originally given. You can't push a reduced lease by reducing it on the server. There probably is a client command to renew the lease [different for every operating system no doubt ...]. The certain way to reduce the lease is to restart the machine in question [or wait for all the leases to expire].

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by brushton:

Does it tell us anything if some devices are still on a near-24-hour refresh after 30 minutes have expired?

The dumb question is the one you don't ask ...

AIUI, the clients own the lease for the time they were originally given. You can't push a reduced lease by reducing it on the server. There probably is a client command to renew the lease [different for every operating system no doubt ...]. The certain way to reduce the lease is to restart the machine in question [or wait for all the leases to expire].

Thanks!

I did wonder if that might be the case, but when I reduced the lease time I saw some that had changed to the new timeout and some still unchanged. I hadn't knowingly reset any of the "short-lease" devices, although I didn't look closely enough to see if maybe they were only the ones connected by wifi and that might have disconnected and reconnected. (Was concentrating on setting up the Pihole).

Anyway, I've now installed the Pihole DHCP server (with a 2d timeout for now) and disabled the one on the router, so I'll see if this makes any difference.