[Discuss] Network IP Conflicts and Dropped Samba Connections Oh My!

[bogstad at pobox.com (Bill Bogstad)]

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Eric Chadbourne <eric at aaca-boston.org> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> So I have these two problems.
>...
>
> 2. ?Staff is occasionally getting IP conficts. ?I've checked to make sure my
> servers have the proper static IPs and that the Comcast SMC Networks router
> doesn't use these addresses in it's dns range. ?We have a couple of wireless
> routers and I'm verifying now they are not the cause.
>
> Here's my current guess as to what's happening.
>....
> 2. ?The IP conflicts are because the smc router has the hiccups and we need
> to purchase a real business router / vpn.

Are the conflicting IP addresses in the DHCP range that the SMC is
managing?  That's not clear to me from your description of the
problem.   If they are, I might guess that the SMC is periodically
resetting itself and forgetting about addresses it has already
allocated.   If you have the ability to setup a monitor port somewhere
in your network infrastructure, you might try setting up a sniffer
there to capture just DHCP packets.   If not, you still might try
this.  You'll only see the initial broadcast packets of  DHCP address
allocation, but it still might give you some useful clues.  If the SMC
has an "uptime" status page, that might tell you something as well.

Good Luck,
Bill Bogstad