TW Blog :: Archives for June 2009

Invalid DHCP Lease on Leopard 10.5.7

Relates to OSX

Quite frustrating having finally converted a client to Mac computers to then suddenly see their wireless network broken after upgrading the MacBook Pros to Leopard 10.5.7.

In short the MBP fails to connect with the hub (in this instance a BT Home Hub and BT Office Hub) when renewing the DHCP lease and thus reverts to using the internal value - 169.254.x.x. I have seen this problem before on my own networks and occasionally connecting an iPod Touch via WiFi. The solution would normally be to assign a static IP address on the local network for the network interface. But this time a static address did not work.

The solution is instead to change the security settings of the hub for the wireless network. I experienced this issue with the BT Home Hub and Windows Vista once so it is hardly unique to Mac OS X. But it is frustrating that these different platforms cannot standardise their protocols. For a brief moment my client feared they would have to roll back their OS with a clean install thanks to the inability of the BT Hub to communicate with OS X Leopard 10.5.7. I cannot recommend which wireless security to use, but the chances are setting a custom key (which should of course be changed regularly anyway) and choosing a different standard is as good a place as any to start in diagnosing your wireless connection issues.

Posted on Tuesday, Jun 16, 2009 at 14:47:58.