Busted Windows 8, 10 update blamed for breaking Brits' DHCP Folks using Windows 10 and 8 on BT and Plusnet networks in the UK are being kicked offline by a mysterious software bug. Computers running the Microsoft operating systems are losing network connectivity due to what appears to be a problem with DHCP. Specifically, it seems some Windows 10 and 8 boxes can no longer reliably …
Sorry, but you failed. Double NATting a system is NOT the same as that system directly connected to the provider network and requesting DHCP addrs from it. Your address is coming from the Asus router. Still, good on you for not subscribing to Talk Talk, like so many other shitheads in the UK.
Do try putting your host on the BT side of your service and let us know how that goes?
I do the same thing on my production home network; comtrend box from the provider, and either a 1st gen Airport Extreme, or my "new" test/hacking network's WRT54GL. Nothing goes in betwixt, except when checking for localized ARP cache poisoning and checking the outbound connection and provider router settings.
Production home network - really? Double Natting - seriously? This makes no sense to what this issue is about.
The home gateway on the router to the provider network - as we all know - comes from the home gateway from the radius profile and PPP negotiates it without DHCP. Unless BT run their home gateways and routers on Windows 10 that's not the point. DHCP runs on the internal interface for the clients, for better or for worse.
Running a 3rd party router does solve one bit of the problem - whether it's in the production tier 3 home network or the DMZ in your shed. Seems a little harsh to dismiss quite a fair precaution in my mind with a lot of technical knownot putdown on the back of it.
"that tends to suggest that the problem is with the BT kit, not the client."
And given my experience with the quality of the BT kit, last one I had I changed the network from 192.168.1.x to 192.168.0.x to go with my antique setup, only to find the routing dialogs were hard coded to only accept 192.168.1.x addresses. I would certainly be focussing on "the BT kit".
It got replaced with an OpenReach Fibre modem and a proper router.
Is everyone sure that this is actually a problem limited to BT routers?
My wife's W10 PC has been suffering from network disconnects all this week. It's losing it's IP address and we aren't using a BT router. The DHCP addresses are coming from a Linux server and I can read the logs on there and my box is offering the DHCP info and it just isn't being taken up. It's only affected 1 PC, none of our other ones seem to be affected.
"Is everyone sure that this is actually a problem limited to BT routers?"
I'd suggest there's about a zero % chance that it's limited to BT routers. What will have happened is that MS, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that some DHCP option or other is 20 years old and now obsolete... without bothering to check if any brand of kit is still using it. Which implies that any router using said DHCP option will not work. It's a bit like if you've ever tried to change out a Sky router - you need to activate DHCP option 61 on the outside interface to connect to their network, which most modern routers don't bother with, so you're stuck using the (unimaginably shitty) Sky kit.
The proximate cause of this one is MS's error - they should've checked before rolling out. But the underlying cause is telcos insisting on shipping really decrepit equipment to their customers and not replacing it in a reasonably prompt manner.
"If DHCP fails when the client is pulling an address from a BT router, but works when it pulls an address from a non-BT box ... that tends to suggest that the problem is with the BT kit, not the client."
No. It tells you that either the client or the server (or both!) is not fully standards complient such that in combination, they don't work.
As it happens, I got home yesterday to my wife telling me her Win10 laptop can't connect to the network. I checked. It sees the WiFi but has a 169.*.*.* address. I tell Win10 to do run it's diags/fix thingy. It still fails. I run CMD and do an IPCONFIG /renew. Fails. Try IPCONFIG /release, IPCONFIG shows ip address details gon, use IPCONFIG to get new address and now it works. We're on VM and the Win10 laptop connects and gets DHCP from a re-purposed SamKnows monitoring router running DD-WRT. This has not been an issue once since she installed Win10. An odd coincidence? A windows 10 issue? Or does DD-WRT have the same "problem" as the BT/Plusnet routers?
>No. It tells you that either the client or the server (or both!) is not
>fully standards complient such that in combination, they don't work.
You have the idea that fully standards complient combinations always majgically work? ROFL
I take it that you don't actually have much to do with writing or using standards?
It could be a combination of both. Once I had a issue with a Netgear wifi device which wasn't able to get an IP from an old 3Com router which worked without issues with any other device.
Luckily my access point allowed for capturing a dump of the network traffic. It turned out the router was sending DHCP answers which contained more options (some unusual, but fully RFC compliant, like 12, "hostname") than the (open source) library used by Netgear could handle, being badly coded and implying a DHCP offer packet could not be larger than n bytes.
I fixed it using a Raspberry PI as a DHCP server turning off the router DHCP server.
I would not be surprised if someone at Microsoft "optimized" the DHCP code without actually knowing enough of the DHCP protocol. Many young developers believe reading the original specification and implementing full support is a waste of time.
Seriously though - DHCP - how hard can it be ??
Too difficult for Logitech apparently.
I had to give my Harmony Hub a static IP address as well. This was last month so they've apparently not fixed it yet.
"I had to give my Harmony Hub a static IP address as well. This was last month so they've apparently not fixed it yet."
Oh, is that what happened? After I tried restarting a couple times I reconfigured it into the bin. Was more fiddly than doing things by hand. Lucky I got it at a discount.
That was months ago, though. You say this was last month? Hmmm. Maybe my kit just died.
The original forum post was from 2015. I installed mine last month - so over a year and Logitech have still not fixed it. Mine worked but would periodically go into a fugue state for ten minutes. Giving it a static IP address fixed that. I still wish they had redesigned the remote but it's working well now.
This "update now bitch, you're helpless" mentality is a serious fucking problem and Microsoft is going to have to address this issue. The internet is swelling with pages describing update problems with Windows 10, and quite rightfully. It's no longer a debate if Windows 10 has approached updates in a broken manner, it's a sad fact.
These Windows update problems are making Mac and Linux look like advanced operating systems, when in reality Mac and Linux are just doing what their users expect, nothing advanced about that.
Arrive on-site, spend 15-20 mins checking the obvious then tell Joe Bloggs "It's because you've got Windows 10 and use BT broadband". They'll proceed to tell you, in excruciating detail, how their phone/tablet/laptop/neighbour are all fine & then look at you suspiciously whilst impugning your technical ability & parentage! I'm framing this... ;-)
{sigh} When something like that may require an intervention, I've already given a heads up to all the potential suffering individuals. Saves wear and tear on both sides. As for the netsh fix, been having to use it since about Windows XP in one form or another. Microsoft has regular teething problems with networking so much that ipconfig/all requires no thought at all.
"...then look at you suspiciously whilst impugning your technical ability & parentage!"
Ah, you've evidently met either my girlfriend or some spiritual twin of hers. Every time her work laptop fails to connect to a keyboard, mouse or the same router everything else in the house is perfectly happy with, or her VPN just randomly drops, I get exactly that look.
Ah, you've evidently met either my girlfriend or some spiritual twin of hers. Every time her work laptop fails to connect to a keyboard, mouse or the same router everything else in the house is perfectly happy with, or her VPN just randomly drops, I get exactly that look.
Is her name 'Cortana'??
My family and friends when I'm telling them to do something over the phone to fix their kit are often the same. One memorable comment from a sibling was "But it won't work if I do that!" My response was along the lines of "Oh yes it will and remind me which one of us has the word "engineer" in their job title?"
I've just dealt with three computers in the last couple of days. The first of which was a TalkTalk router; when I first looked I thought it might have been related to the mirai worm going around, but then I had a couple of others that were on BT hubs.
Edit: on two occasions I tried setting a fixed IP address in the Windows IPv4 configuration, re-enabling DCHP after then appeared to work.
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Agreed, it's not just BT. I manage a dozen networks, all using Zen. We have Cisco 877 or Cisco 887 on them all, and we've had this problem for a few weeks now. The first time it happened, I even had a desktop PC couriered to me as I couldn't use teamviewer to access it.
We had three on Monday, two Tuesday and two yesterday, at four different sites.
Running those commands does fix it, but you can only run them if you are a local admin, which our users aren't....
We actually reckon it's solely a windows problem, unrelated to any router, because all our sites use SBS 2011 or 2012 R2 as the DHCP provider. Our bets are on a recent windows update.
It's a PITA.
In all our cases, they are all win 10, upgraded from Win 7.
Dear customer,
Good news! Thanks to your unpaid alpha testing, this DHCP patch will be fixed before it is released to Enterprise and CBB customers.
Unfortunately, your PC will not be able to receive the corrected patch because it can no longer get an IP address. We are aware that this will inconvenience a small number of our users. However, awareness does not equal caring, so you're on your own figuring out a workaround. We suggest using your phone to search our user forums, where other disgruntled customers have shared random solutions that probably will not work.
Thank you again for alpha and beta testing our software. We hope you're enjoying your "free" copy of Windows 10.
Your pal, SatNad
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