kcwireless-talk: Re: Everest

[Gerald Combs]

On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Joe Goodman wrote:

> I'm sure there's a better "technical" explanation than this, but for the layman,
> "keepalive" tells the router to keep up continuous communication with the WAN
> gateway, thereby keeping it's connection alive and never relenquishing it's IP
> address.  I can reboot the servers if I need to.  Still being new to Linux and
> dependent on Windoze for to many things, I have to reboot at least weekly.
> Cheers!

Assuming Everest parcels out IP addresses using DHCP over vanilla Ethernet
framing (as opposed to that nasty PPPoE crap), you shouldn't need this.
As far as the DHCP server is concerned, you have your address until your
lease expires.  Keeping the same address between reboots depends on

  - The client asking for the same address when it's time to renew
    the lease.  The DHCP clients on Windows, Linux and *BSD do this by
    default AFAIK.  Dunno about Linksys, D-Link or similar appliances.

  - The server being able/willing to give you the same address.  Unless
    your network has been readdressed or your DHCP admin is a BOFH,
    this is probably the case.

I'm on RoadRunner at home, which uses DHCP with 24 hour lease times.
My firewall has been able retain its IP address for several months
(even across reboots) without any sort of keepalive.

> Gerald Combs wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 10 Sep 2002, Joe Goodman wrote:
> >
> > > That's correct.  I've been running http and ftp servers since January. They
> > > don't guarantee a static IP address, but I have a Linksys router on a UPS
> > > and with the "keepalive" option turned on.  I've had the same IP address for
> >
> > What does the keepalive option do, exaclty?  Just curious.
> 
> 
> 
>