Originally Posted by
Centurion
If you have a basic concept of IP addresses you will understand the need to release your devices IP addresses in 24hours and sometimes even less. If the hotel resort kept all the IPs of the connected devices logged in over 24 hrs they would soon find no room to assign an IP address to your device. You could find a way around this but each location would be different.
I'm actually a network engineer. What you've described is not how it works. Addresses are generally handed out via a protocol called DHCP and a device is given its address lease for a specified amount of time, then the device continually renews the lease as it remains online. DHCP is an all or nothing config; they either have addresses in their pool to hand out, and the device keeps it until it times out or is manually revoked, and if that pool of addresses is exhausted, new devices cannot get on the network.
In Hyatt's case, the issue is not losing your IP, as you still have it and can still reach the first hop router (default gateway). The issue is their "captive portal" system they've bolted on top of the access layer; this is the part that pops up the annoying browser window asking for your email address. I'm fine with that the first time, but that system times you out daily and perhaps it's an Apple problem, but it knocks both iOS and MacOS devices off most days until you open a browser window and intentionally access an insecure website URL to allow the system to show you the portal screen again. Toggling wifi off and back on will also fix it, but that takes longer.