[WikiEN-l] Re: Notice to an Admin

Mon May 30 20:25:12 UTC 2005

On 5/30/05, Cranston Snord <enviroknot at hotmail.com> wrote:
> As for the IP, David Gerard insists that Roadrunner keeps users on the same
> IP "for months": actually, my record time for keeping an IP has been two
> weeks. Your IP only stays static if your cable modem stays online, and
> thanks to large-scale construction in my area, we are regularly hit with
> brownouts and blackouts, not to mention cable service downtimes.

It doesn't matter how long you keep it, what matters is that you both
used the same address.  The DHCP assigned addresses are not pooled
with the whole world, but rather are pooled with everyone hanging off
the same downstream CMTS port, so you'd have to be in the same city
and probably the same neighborhood to have any chance at all.

So while you claim you are unrelated for that to be true you would have to:
1. Live in the same city, and almost certainly the same neighborhood.
Since you claim to only know him via Wikipedia the probability that
you also live next to each other is infinitesimal.
2. Then you'd have to be offline at the same time... And manage to get
each others IP. Perhaps simultaneously offline is not unlikely, but if
a whole area went down there were many people going after addresses a
swap would still be quite unlikely.
3. Despite what you claim about assignment, the vast majority of
broadband providers have their DHCP servers set to attempt to
constantly assign an address, and when they can't they use a least
recently used policy to assign from the pool. I have road runner
service at my house and was offline for a few hours last night because
I kicked out the power cable... and I still have the same IP I've had
for months.

I hope this explains why no one believes you.