[CentOS] dhcp lease-time

Thu Jan 5 08:54:17 UTC 2012
John Hodrien <J.H.Hodrien at leeds.ac.uk>

On Thu, 5 Jan 2012, Timothy Murphy wrote:

> Why is the default lease-time set to only 10 minutes (600 seconds)
> in /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf (CentOS-6.2) as distributed?

I assume the dull answer is: because that's what Redhat set it to.

> Why is not set to a much longer time?

What length do you think the correct default should be?

> Is there any disadvantage in doing that?
> Or conversely, is a short lease-time safer in some way?

Short lease times work better with very transient devices, since the IP
address is returned to the pool much faster when a machine disconnects but
doesn't release the DHCP lease.

jh