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Modify Default Lease Durations for a Scope

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008

When a scope is created, the default lease duration is set to eight days. In most cases, this value is sufficient. However, because lease renewal is an ongoing process that can affect the performance of DHCP clients and your network, it is sometimes useful to change the lease duration. Use the following guidelines to decide how to best modify lease duration settings for improving DHCP performance on your network:

  • If you have a large number of IP addresses available and configurations that rarely change on your network, increase the lease duration to reduce the frequency of lease renewal queries between clients and the DHCP server. This reduces some network traffic caused by clients renewing their leases.

  • If you have a limited number of IP addresses available and if client configurations change or clients move often on your network, reduce the lease duration to promote scavenging of old IP addresses by the DHCP server. This increases the rate at which addresses are returned to the available address pool for reassignment to new clients.

Note

You can also set a separate lease time, different from the default scope lease time used by your DHCP clients, such as alternate lease times for supporting other types of clients such as BOOTP or remote access clients. For more information, see Managing BOOTP Clients.