randomizing lease renewal?

[Jeff A. Earickson]

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007, Shane Kerr wrote:

> Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 16:43:17 +0200
> From: Shane Kerr <Shane_Kerr at isc.org>
> Reply-To: dhcp-users at isc.org
> To: dhcp-users at isc.org
> Subject: Re: randomizing lease renewal?
> 
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>> 2) Why ? In the years I've been on this list we've only ever been
>> given one sensible reason for such a function, but normally it's a
>> variation on "we want to make it hard for people to run servers".
>
> One possible alternative reason is for the privacy of the users.
>
> If leases are relatively short and the server does not maintain long-term logs,
> then there is no way to map past activity to a specific client ID. This protects
> users from both the black hats (like evil hackers compromising the server box)
> and from the white hats (like court orders to report who is using a given IP at
> a given time).
>
> I think I read recently that some American university has just such a system set
> up (although possibly just because the administrators hate the RIAA), so I
> deserve no blame or credit for the merits of such an idea. :)

Bingo!  That was the motivation for my asking yesterday...

Jeff Earickson
Colby College