On 5/30/05, Cranston Snord enviroknot@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.