preferred IP?

[cmillar6]

I have a desktop running XP and a wireless laptop running VISTA behind a linksys router with DHCP enabled. I have noticed that my vista laptop always gives itself an IP address of 192.168.1.106 even though 192.168.1.101-192.168.1.105 remain unassigned by the router. When I do ipconfig on the laptop it says (preferred) next to the 192.168.1.106 address. Anybody know why Vista does this? Resetting the router does not change anything. Vista laptop has full connectivity to internet and works on the network just fine, I just find this behaviour odd. I would think it should grab an IP of 192.168.1.101 since that is the next number to be allocated.

[tdotsnoball]

After some quick Google searches I came across this in two separate postings, maybe it's worth a try?

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b/928233/en-us

[cmillar6]

after hours of googling I came across the same thing. It seemed that was more for people who were unable to obtain an IP address at all. Regardless, I tried it anyway and it didn't solve the issue. I'm not to worried about it since everything works fine, little things like this bug me though. It shouldn't always grab an IP address of 192.168.1.106, it should take the next available IP address, namely, 192.168.1.101

[tdotsnoball]

Ok I need some more information:

When you do ipconfig/all what do you see for the Lease obtained and Lease expired dates/times?

One possible explanation lies with the DHCP protocol itself. When your laptop's lease expires, it will always ask for the last IP it had, regardless of what is available. So in your case, if your laptop only gets used on your home network and you originally had some additional devices on the network taking up IPs 192.168.1.101-105 when you first connected with your laptop, then that may be the cause of your issue.

[cmillar6]

lease expires and renews every 24 hours. I understand what you are saying however there are not enough computers in my home to occupy that many IP's and resetting the router and rebooting the laptop should reset the IP address. At least it does with my XP and Linux PC's. Vista continuously hangs onto the .106 IP