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[Rebel Yell]

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Edited August 7, 2008 by Rebel Yell

[A_Sense_Of_Rage]

Assigning an IP from an available pool is called DHCP protocol. When you log in, you are assigned an IP from the pool for a specified period, called a lease. When the time period expires (the lease expires), you are assigned a new IP. What the server is doing is releasing all the IPs and assigning new ones to active nodes. The ones in use before the lease expired and then left hanging when the user logged off are returned back into the pool.

Sometimes, the pool runs out of IPs, in which case when your lease expires, all of a sudden you can't communicate with the server (because you aren't able to be assigned a new one). These limits are usually based on quotas for available bandwidth and other things. In the old days, with dial up, the server would just kick you off and terminate the connection. If enough new users log on before the enough leases expire to accomodate them, you are pushed down the queue until you finally hit bottom and get kicked off. But with broadband, it's not as obvious what's happening becuase the server can't "hang up" on you, and your modem doesn't know what happened on the other end, and you end up clicking around like "WTF?"

Just a hypothesis, there are others on here I know for a fact that know more than me about these things.....

[stratomaster]

I use to have these kinda problems with AOL dial up.. but with broadband it doesn't happen any more for me. But the internet does crash sometimes when I click around vigorously or open a few windows at once

Edited September 28, 2005 by stratomaster