what's ipconfig/release ?

i'm wondering what does this dos command do: ipconfig/release?

if you are in dos command and you type

ipconfig /? <-- this will tell you all the different variations of ipconfig and what they do.

In case you are too lazy though

ipconfig <-- will display your current network adaptor and some of the status of it
ipconfig /all <-- will display all of your network adaptors and info on them
ipconfig /release <-- will release all of a dhcp ip information
ipconfig /renew <-- will search for a dhcp server and attempt to automatically gather the information (ip, subnet, gateway...etc)

ipconfig /release drops the current DHCP address
ipconfig /renew gets a new DHCP address
ipconfig /flushdns clears the DNS cache (can be hant to remember this one for troubleshooting).

Of course, as withall command line tools

ipconfig /? tells you what switches etc are available, what they do and how to use them

when you do ipconfig /release connection name, if your getting your ip off a dhcp server, it will drop the current information you have for your connection

You could have found this info your self useing help and support, see attachment.

just to give you a bit bacground, i work for sbcglobal techsupport. I asked that ipconfig/release question because part of our troubleshooting step and it is actually the last resort of our troubleshooting guideline is to do that when the customer can't connect with sync with their modem.I'm just wondering if I do that with my home pc, will it affect my connection? I'm using dialup though.

yes, normally you have a dynamic IP and even if it's static it's definitly assigned by a dhcp server.
After you have typed ipconfig /release you can type ipconfig /renew to get a new IP adress from the server.

Note though that you won;t always get a "new" public or private address. Many of the Cable DSL routers are DHCP servers themselves. Your computer gets the address from them. According to the different cable suppliers I have spoken to it takes the modem being off for more than 24 hours to get a new address, and then you often won't get a new one because there are reservations made for the addresses.

yeah, obviously, with me that's the case, I've never tried to release/renew my IP when I was still on dial-up so I don't know.

/edited

so..you can ipconfig/release and renew a static connection? static connection uses only a specific ip right? if that's so..they can get another ip address from the server if the do that?

Not sure about that, it depends on how the dhcp server is configured. But a real static IP would be one that you enter your own and don't request from a dhcp server.