Routing Cuts out for a few minutes every time a laptop joins network

  • Thread starter Thread starter Colin Higbie
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Colin Higbie

I am running a pair of Windows 2000 Servers on a small network (sharing AD and
DNS). One of the two servers is also the router. Both are set to run DHCP,
covering different segments of the same subnet (the router's DHCP never
successfully initializes though, saying it doesn't have permission?? maybe
this is related to the real problem described below?). There is one laptop
that joins the network wirelessly (802.11g) through a standard Wi-Fi access
point.

Every day when that computer turns on, the whole rest of the network loses
communication with the Router, which is one of the 2 servers. We can't even
ping it. After a couple of minutes, it comes back and everyone has access. The
problem seems to be limited to that one laptop joining the network. It gives
an error on the server that there is a conflict for the IP address, but the
laptop is just a DHCP client with no default IP address.

What on Earth could cause this? How can a DHCP client throw the network off?

Thank you for any help,
Colin
 
Sounds like DHCP is allocating an IP address which your router machine
is already using. Duplicate IPs interrupt traffic flow until the situation
is sorted out. Give the servers static IP addresses and exclude these
addresses from the DHCP scope.

Do you have a particular reason to run two DHCP servers? There are valid
reasons to do it, but you need to know exactly what you are doing. If you
really want the second one to work, it must be authorised in AD before it
will function. This is a security feature to prevent someone setting up a
rogue DHCP service.
 
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