Patent ID: 7577146

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining, at a network element, DHCP lease time for IP addresses of one or more clients; in response to a DHCP renewal request of an IP address from a client, on behalf of a DHCP server, providing DHCP renewal services to the client based on lease time information associated with the client without substantially invoking the DHCP server, wherein the IP address of the client is allocated with a first lease time by the network element, the first lease time being greater than a predetermined lease time of the client received during an authentication of the client; in response to the request for renewal of the IP address, examining the maintained lease time associated with the client to determine whether a second lease time by renewal is less than a remaining portion of the first lease time; and renewing the IP address for the second lease time without substantially invoking the DHCP server, the second lease time being allocated from the remaining portion of the first lease time.