Today, Amazon VPC added a new feature to its DHCP option set called IPv6 preferred lease time setting, which allows customers to adjust the frequency of IPv6 lease renewals. This feature gives customers the option to increase the preferred lease time of IPv6 address assignments on Amazon EC2 Nitro instances to minimize the number of IPv6 lease renewals and prevent possible renewal failures. This setting applies to both dualstack and IPv6-only Amazon EC2 Nitro instances in the VPC.

Amazon EC2 instances use DHCP lease renewals to update IPv6 address assignment on a periodic basis. By default, the IPv6 preferred lease time is 140 seconds and DHCP lease renewals for IPv6 address assignments occur at the halfway mark of 70 seconds. Customers who require long-term IPv6 addressing for their Amazon EC2 Nitro instances can increase the IPv6 preferred lease time and avoid frequent renewals. The IPv6 preferred lease time for Amazon EC2 instances other than Amazon EC2 Nitro instances will remain 140 seconds.

The IPv6 preferred lease time setting is available in all AWS commercial regions, the AWS GovCloud (US) Regions, and the Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. Customers can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, and APIs for this feature. For more information on this feature, visit the VPC documentation page.