When troubleshooting networking issues, you might have come across different guides that suggest releasing and renewing your Internet Protocol (IP). In most cases, this can resolve IP conflicts and communication issueswith the DHCP server.
While renewing IP is originally done to get a new address from the DHCP pool, you’re not guaranteed to receive a new one every time. This is because the DHCP server can assign the same IP to the client device (only renewing its lease period).
In fact, if you have reserved its MAC address via router settings, you’ll get the same IP every time you reconnect to the network. Here, I shall guide you with the technical details of IP renewal and how to use it on Windows.
Step 1: Open Command-Line Utility
Let’s begin by entering the command line interface of the Windows operating system. you may launch either of the built-in programs—Command Prompt or Powershelland utilize the same command (discussed in steps 3 and 4). In this section, I’ll be demonstrating using CMD.
Note:you may release and renew IP with or without administrative privilege.
Step 2: Check Your Current IP Configuration
Before moving on with the dedicated release and renew commands, I recommend checking your present IP configuration first. All you have to do is run theipconfig /allcommand. This should list the detailed information of all your network adapters (unless disabled).
Here are the necessary fields you need to check:
Step 3: Execute Release IP Command
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client-server protocol is responsible formanaging unique IP addressesfor every device.
Whenever a client releases the leased IP, aDHCP releasenotification reaches the server and clears the configuration in the selected interface. This IP can now be allocated to any other available device in the network. However, if you renew it or have already reserved your MAC address (viarouter settings), the same address gets leased.
In Windows, you get two different options, each for IPv4 and IPv6. Execute any one of the following commands based on what you need:
Step 4: Execute Renew IP Command
The client starts the renewal when the lease reaches50% of its validity time(also called the renewal period). During this process, it sends aREQUESTmessage to the DHCP server.
