Posts Tagged ‘mask’

How to renew IP address, Add Routing and flush DNS cache on Windows XP / Vista / 7

Friday, November 25th, 2011

There are two handy Windows commands which can be used to renew IP address or flush prior cached DNS records which often create problems with resolving hosts.

1. To renew the IP address (fetch address from DHCP server) C:> ipconfig /release
C:> ipconfig /renew

In above cmd ipconfig /release will de-assign the IP address configured on all Windows LAN and Wireless interfaces, whether ipconfig /renew will send request for IP address to the DNS server.

To unassign and assign again IP address from DHCP server only for a particular LAN or WLAN card:

C:> ipconfig /release LAN
C:> ipconfig /renew LAN
C:> ipconfig /release WLAN
C:> ipconfig /renew WLAN

2. Adding specific routing to Windows

Windows has a Route command similar by syntax to Linux’s route command.
To add routing via a specific predefined IP addresses on Windows the commands should be something like:

C:> Route add 192.168.40.0 mask 255.255.255.0 192.168.41.253
C:> Route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 192.168.41.254
The first command adds IP 192.168.40.0 in the network of 255 hosts to be routed via 192.168.41.253
The second one adds 192.168.41.254 as a default gateway for all outbound traffic from the Windows host.
To make permanent routing -p switch is used.
3. To clear Windows DNS cache (flush DNS cached records) C:> ipconfig /flushdns
This will clear all IP records corresponding to hostnames previously cached on the Windows host. Using ipconfig /flushdns is especially handy when IP address for a specific DNS host is changed. Flushing the Windows DNS cache can save us a lot of waiting before the domain example.com starts resolving to the new IP address let’s say 1.2.3.4 instead of the old one 2.2.2.2