> I assume the Mac would know to begin the DHCP discovery phase, instead of sending blind requests for a former IP address...
I wonder if that is my problem. Often, my Mac won't connect to my mobile hotspot. I open the lid, it starts attempting to connect to the hotspot and just sits. Connecting. Forever. I can turn off WiFi, turn off the hotspot, and sometimes even reboot both my phone and my laptop and still be unable to connect.
I recently figured out that if this not-connecting happens, I can disable wifi, disable hotspot, turn on WiFi and select my not-on hotspot to connect to. A couple of seconds later, it fails and asks to run network diagnostics. I cancel, disable wifi, turn back on the hotspot, turn back on wifi and, presto, it connects.
I figured there was some caching going on and that I am effectively invalidating the cache. Maybe this is what the op is talking about here.
It sounds more like your hotspot is janky - if a Mac doesn’t get a DHCP response it will still connect to the wifi network using and autoconf address. There is no dhcp related scenario that causes it to not connect to the network at all.
I wonder if that is my problem. Often, my Mac won't connect to my mobile hotspot. I open the lid, it starts attempting to connect to the hotspot and just sits. Connecting. Forever. I can turn off WiFi, turn off the hotspot, and sometimes even reboot both my phone and my laptop and still be unable to connect.
I recently figured out that if this not-connecting happens, I can disable wifi, disable hotspot, turn on WiFi and select my not-on hotspot to connect to. A couple of seconds later, it fails and asks to run network diagnostics. I cancel, disable wifi, turn back on the hotspot, turn back on wifi and, presto, it connects.
I figured there was some caching going on and that I am effectively invalidating the cache. Maybe this is what the op is talking about here.