IP Conflict

[ChuckleBrother]

Network has been otherwise entirely fine, and then this. Every once in a while Windows claims to be detecting an IP conflict and every computer on my network drops the connection.

It's only temporary but it completely boots me out of any web-based usage I'm currently doing. Now this would have seemed ok, but when I look in Event Log it claims that the infringing device is my router and the IP address in question is 0.0.0.0

I've peaked around and I have absolutely no idea how to solve this or what would even cause this issue, why would anything even USE 0.0.0.0? Help please

[Spblue]

That doesn't sound right. Can you post the actual text in the event log please?

[ZZLEE]

Did you just buy a new bluetooth device ? Could be an un set up bluetooth or a hack of your wireless ?

[ChuckleBrother]

There appear to be two issues that seem to occur in tandem.

MAC ending in 6031 is my desktop, 3A-12 is my router. 192.168.1.254 is my secondary stupid router/modem from 2wire.

[Spblue]

Looks to me like you have two DHCP servers on the same network. The problem is that they both reply to DHCP requests, and when your secondary router replies first, it denies renewal of your previous IP address (since it wasn't the one that issued it in the first place).

All you need is to disable the DHCP server on your second router and you'll stop getting those errors.

[ChuckleBrother]

Alright, I think I did this, but now I have the issue for whatever reason that my computers can't see the server. This is with DHCP off on the crappy 2wire router, ideas?

[Squeetard]

Dont use the wan port on your second router to plug into the first router. you have to go from a regular lan port.

[ChuckleBrother]

Originally Posted by Squeetard

Dont use the wan port on your second router to plug into the first router. you have to go from a regular lan port.

Well the thing is that my second router is also an integrated DSL modem, it doesn't HAVE any WAN port to the best of my knowledge. I can ping across my network to all the proper addresses:

192.168.0.1 --> D-Link Router
192.168.0.2 --> 2Wire Modem
192.168.0.3 --> Windows Home Server
192.168.0.100+ --> My machines

Remote desktop works, as far as I can tell all network activities seem good, I can share drives, but now it seems I've broken basic WHS functionality, my Win7 machine can no longer see the WHS and when attempting to find it, it now fails. Should my WHS have 2 IPs(as per your diagram in my previous thread) or just a single that is functional on both networks?

[Spblue]

Hum, wait while I scratch my head and try to figure out how you've configured everything...

So your D-link router is your DHCP server, giving out addresses above 192.168.0.100. Your WHS is using a static ip configuration at 192.168.0.3, with a gateway defined to your 2Wire modem (192.168.0.2). The rest of your network is using 192.168.0.1 as the gateway (per DHCP config). Have I got everything so far?

That setup should work just fine. The reason for the separate network for the WHS-2Wire link was to put the 2Wire on a different broadcast domain. This would prevent other computers on the network from seeing the 2Wire at all, making sure a misconfiguration won't send traffic to it. It's not required though.

The "see" thing just looks like a NetBIOS resolution error. Windows home networks have them all the time. This is because finding hosts rely on broadcasts with some wacky election rules between all the machines to decide who controls the actual "Local Network" list. When this fails, you'll have an empty local network neighborhood list even though all your machines are actually up.

There are a few solutions. The easiest one is to use IP addresses to browse your WHS shares. That works 100% and requires no configuration. Basically, in the path bar at the top of a folder window, just type \\192.168.0.3. This will list the shares on your WHS and add the server in the network objects list.

Another solution requires editing the hosts file on your 192.168.0.100+ computers. This file works like some kind of phone book for computers. You put a machine name, along with which address it has and you can access it by name. The full location of the file is : c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts. If you open this file with notepad, you can add entries in this format :

IPAddress Name

In your case, you can put say :
192.168.0.1 DLink
192.168.0.2 DSL
192.168.0.3 WHS

After you do this, if you try, say, "ping WHS" it will properly resolve to 192.168.0.3. This approach works well, but the downsides are that you have to edit that hosts file on each machine, and if your friend comes over he'll have to use the previous \\192.168.0.3 method if he can't see the server.

The last and best method is to use your WHS as both your DHCP and DNS server, but since you're using two separate gateways, that configuration is way beyond the scope of this post (also I drank too much beer :P). Let me know how it goes.