Needing Accurate and Recent DHCP Lease Info

Geezer2021

I’m exhausted, finding only dated answers. It’s like this: I want to purchase my own router and replace the one I’m renting. I know that I cannot do that unless the new router is issued a new DHCP lease, which lease is only issued upon the expiration of the old one. I’m reading that I can log in to the router and release the current DHCP by using a browser and entering 192.168.1.1. That doesn’t work; I’m being blocked from doing that. Then I read that if I power down the rental router, wait two hours, and then connect my new router, all will come to a happy end. Can someone please assure me that this is so? That if I purchase a new router and use the 2-hour-wait-and-then-connect approach, Verizon will then issue a new IP address to the new device so I can use it? (I already have an ethernet cable connected to the rental)

Accepted answers

gs0b

Welcome to the forums. You're talking to other customers here.

Short story: Don't worry about this. Unplug your old router. Plug in your new router. Done.

Long story: Verizon used to limit residential accounts to one IP address at a time. This meant it had to be released when changing routers. There were a variety of techniques to do this, as you've found all over the internet. However, most people couldn't figure this out and would contact Verizon support to have them release the lease. Verizon eventually figured out this was a waste of everyone's time. They updated their systems to allow two IP addresses to be allocated at a time, thus solving making router switches easy and painless.

Note that while they will allocate two IP address at a time, only one is allowed access to the internet. Thus, you can't plug two routers into one ONT and have both work. Only one router at a tme should be plugged into an ONT. But you don't have to jump through any hoops to release/renew IP address.

Like many things on the internet, people don't keep their old articles up to date with current practices.

One more note; if you have Verizon set-top-boxes, you should know that depending on model they may not work well with a non-Verizon router. If you don't have Verizon boxes, then have fun!

All comments

gs0b

Welcome to the forums. You're talking to other customers here.

Short story: Don't worry about this. Unplug your old router. Plug in your new router. Done.

Cang_Household

The best way to find out is to try and see. That would involve some down time though.

If you want to know the mechanism before hand, gs0b gives you the information. Right now the residential layer 3 is configured to have an active IP at a time. If you unplug a WAN device then immediately plug in another WAN device. The DHCP transaction would give the new WAN device the same IP address as your old WAN device.

Geezer2021

Thanks for your reply. I did go ahead and switch routers. Yes, there was a little down time. I just chose to log into my Verizon router at myfiosgateway.com, chose to release the DHCP lease, and, just after I clicked on, “Apply,” I pulled the power cord off of the rental. I waited 15 minutes and connected my new router. It very quickly connected to the internet. The rest of the setup was just creating a network name and password through an app. All of my devices found the new WiFi network and, after I entered the password, they worked. The cord has now been cut and thanks again for posting.

gs0b

Glad it's working!

For future reference, you didn't need to do the DHCP release or wait 15 minutes. You could have unplugged the old router then plugged in the new, and it would have worked just fine.

Appreciate your coming back to update the thread.