Windows NT 4.0 DHCP Client Modified to be RFC 2131 Retransmission Compliant (190552)

DHCP clients are responsible for all message retransmission. The client MUST adopt a retransmission strategy that incorporates a randomized exponential backoff algorithm to determine the delay between retransmissions. The delay between retransmissions SHOULD be chosen to allow sufficient time for replies from the server to be delivered based on the characteristics of the internetwork between the client and the server. For example, in a 10Mb/sec Ethernet internetwork, the delay before the first retransmission SHOULD be 4 seconds randomized by the value of a uniform random number chosen from the range -1 to +1. Clients with clocks that provide resolution granularity of less than one second may choose a non-integer randomization value. The delay before the next retransmission SHOULD be 8 seconds randomized by the value of a uniform number chosen from the range -1 to +1. The retransmission delay SHOULD be doubled with subsequent retransmissions up to a maximum of 64 seconds. The client MAY provide an indication of retransmission attempts to the user as an indication of the progress of the configuration process.