# DHCP Fails on PowerBook



## spoonboy42 (Sep 28, 2006)

Hey Mac fans.

I run a home network in my apartment with my roommates. We use a Netgear Rangemax 240 wireless router (wpa for security) to share our cable modem connection. I use Linux (on a macbook), one roommate uses Windows, and one roommate uses OSX. The Linux and Windows computers are able to connect to the network, get an address via DHCP, and use the internet perfectly fine. I can also use the integrated airport in my MacBook to connect to the network under OSX with no problems.

My roommate's PowerBook G4 (12-inch) has problems connecting to the network, however. We have triple-checked the WPA password, and the PowerBook can see our network and connect to it. However, when connected, it is unable to use DHCP to get an IP address, and gives itself a self-assigned one instead.

I did some research, and it seems like some other people may have encountered this problem. The general consensus seems to be that the DHCP client in OSX is timing out too early, and should wait longer so it can recieve the response from the DHCP server and get properly configured. Does anyone have any idea how to change the timeout setting in OSX? I've looked all through the network panel in System Preferences to no avail, and the command-line tools I'm used to from Linux, like dhcpcd, seem absent on the Mac.

I should mention that, when we plug her powerbook into one of the router's ethernet ports using the built in wire-line ethernet, the Powerbook can get an IP address and browse the net with no problems.

To test my hypothesis about dhcp timing out too soon, I downloaded a utility called IPNetMonitorX and used its DHCP test utility to simulate DHCP requests on the network. I found that the first few DHCP discovery tests would usually fail, but after a half-dozen or so attempts, it was able to successfully get an address from the router.

So, essentially, I need a way to tell the built-in OSX DHCP client to increase its timeout setting, and to retry a few times if it doesn't see a response. Does anyone know of a way to modify these settings (or of another solution to my problem)? Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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