[vox-tech] Another Round of eth0 Problemas - Fixed, now how t o prevent?

[Karalius, Joseph]

Ken Herron wrote:
> It sounds like you might have another computer on your LAN using the 
> same IP address.

Ken wins!
The problem turned out to be someone else in IT was bringing a new printer
online with the same IP address. Doh!

I discovered this when I entered http://mmagdb/ for the 122nd time, and
instead of serving up the redirect from Apache, the Plone site, or nothing
at all, an HP printer status page from the offending piece of equipment came
up with confirmation of the duplicate IP.  The printer was promptly brought
down and everything seems to be working as expected.  Our WAN guy maintains
that he checked for duplicate IP addresses.

Why do the little things cause the biggest headaches?

This is the second time I've run into duplicate IP address problems on this
network.  The static IPs are mixed into the same host range with the DHCP
licensed IPs and IT's system for organizing them or notifying all personnel
of IP assignments has failed.  It like they just hijack a number and don't
even ping for a response.  I heard there's an Excel file somewhere that has
the reserved static IP addresses on it but changes to the file are not
propagated to everyone in the IT group.  Huh? There's gotta be a better
way...

I spent the better part of the last 5 days fretting about this problem which
turned out to be because of lack of communication by IT.  (Of course, if I
knew better, I should have explored that possibility further.)  I plan to
address this with the parties involved, but instead of just ripping into
them I want to bring suggestions to the table.  It's not my job to do either
of those but it's for their own good, since the next time they knock this
server out, the downtime will be far more expensive and they will get kicked
with a bigger boot from management.

So, if I may redirect the discussion, I'd like to hear about how the network
admins on the list organize IP assignments.  More specifically, is it wise
to put static IPs shuffled within the DHCP licensed host range and simply
blacklist the statics from the DHCP server?  Why not put the static IPs in a
different network, that way the address itself would tell you the address
type (static vs. dynamic) and if partitioned out even further, printers
could be in one host range on the network ,and servers could be in another.
Is it common to just ping addresses to find an unused one and then grab it?
Or is this a non-issue and only newbies and hacks are affected by it?

Once again, this mailing list has proven to be a useful resource.  Many
heads are indeed better than one.

Regards,
Joey

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Karalius
Research Associate - Bioinformatics
Molecular Markers and Applied Genomics
Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc
37437 State Highway 16
Woodland, CA 95695-9353
530-669-6131
joseph.karalius (a) seminis dot com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~