Mac DHCP timeout

Does anyone know how to increase the time that OS X waits before considering a DHCP request to have timed out? It seems to wait about 8 seconds, whereas windows waits about 30.

The reason I ask is that I help admin a large network. Earlier this month our servers overloaded and for a week or so they were taking a long time to issue leases. So for about a week, windows computers could connect, but there was a huge Mac problem. Some users were affected, some weren't. Now, we have everything online right now, but if this happens again, I'd like to be able to give my users a temporary work around.

What's key here is that it has to work without 3rd party software. Anyone who ends up needing to raise the timeout time, obviously, cannot DL anything, and we're way too big to make CD distribution practical.

 

Any one? Any ideas?

 

Try editing
/System/Library/SystemConfiguration/IPConfiguration.bundle/Contents/Resources/IP Configuration.xml

change
<key>InitialRetryTimeSeconds</key>
<integer>1</integer>
to 8
and change
<key>MaximumRetryTimeSeconds</key>
<integer>8</integer>
to 60

frig'n slow bloted windows dhcp servers

 

He isn't talking about an issue with the windows machines. Frankly id just hand out static ips if it happens again.