Alternate IP Address causing Domain connections to drop

Thanks.

I should also indicate that at the moment I have the alternate IP in place, was communicating with the control equipment on 0.x, and my connection to the "domain oriented" network resources on 10.x are currently up and working fine. So they DO co-exist, for a while anyway. I'm looking for what causes them to drop out, and why they stay disconnected until the instant I remove the alternate IP. The instant I click OK after deleting the alternate IP address all the resources reappear.

I need to figure this out, because I need to add more class C subnets on 25.x and 26.x to connect with other equipment.

Jeffs,

FQDN = Fully Qualified Domain Name, target them manually in your application(s), it will try to connect whatever the status of the resource reported by the "Browser" service. Example: Let's say the Domain uses "domain.local", and the Domain Controller is "controller.domain.local", if you want to access the Domain Controller, you should use "controller.domain.local"(\\controller.domain.local) or it's IP address (\\192.168.10.253 <-- just an example). If you are logged in, the resource will always authenticate you to the DC, even if you are temporarily "disconnected".

So let's say you want to access a file server in the domain with FQDN of "files.domain.local", you can either directly access it by "\\files.domain.local" or target it's IP address directly, example "\\192.168.1.200". The FQDN will work as long as your local DNS Server can "tell" you the IP address behind the FQDN.

zzz2496

Ps. the "\\" is the sign for Explorer, it means that you are accessing a SMB server, it has the same meaning as "smb://" in *nix family. If you only need "access", not "SMB Access", just use the FQDN, no need to add "\\".

Jeffs said:

Thanks.

I should also indicate that at the moment I have the alternate IP in place, was communicating with the control equipment on 0.x, and my connection to the "domain oriented" network resources on 10.x are currently up and working fine. So they DO co-exist, for a while anyway. I'm looking for what causes them to drop out, and why they stay disconnected until the instant I remove the alternate IP. The instant I click OK after deleting the alternate IP address all the resources reappear.

I need to figure this out, because I need to add more class C subnets on 25.x and 26.x to connect with other equipment.

Ive had that situation quite a few times when I updated my LAN controller using Windows Update, The RTL8168C driver showing as an available driver update for my LAN controller is in fact the wrong driver and will cause exactly the symptoms you described, where it will work with one or both networks for a period of time before mysteriously disconnecting and then your having to remove the configuration for the adapter before it'll work correctly.

If the RollBack driver option is available on the driver properties in Device Manager for your LAN controller then roll it back and see if it continues to happen, I would also try another machine to see if it has the same difficulties and also look around for a different version of your Vista/Windows 7 Ethernet drivers.

You should know by now that hardware related things either work or they don't on Windows, so the fact your LAN controller works perfectly before suddenly failing indicates a driver or hardware problem (unless you have some network script or co-worker giving you grief :P)

Hope it helps.

Steven

To answer some questions:

- only 1 gateway. The gateway is only used to route traffic out to the internet, not the internal network or anything having to do with the devices/resources that drop out. As I've said, when these resources drop out, internet connectivity still works.

- zzz2496: are you talking about putting FQDN entries in my hosts file? If not, ....?

- dmex: I'll check if the driver's been updated.

When I left work, the alternate IP address was in place. When I get to work in the morning, I'll see if I still have the resources showing.

Jeffs,

If the DHCP server is serving a DNS server, you don't need to put the FQDN in your HOSTS file, the DNS server will resolve hostname to IP address for you. What I mean was, you access the resource directly, ignore the network browser report (the page you refer to see network resources). That list will come and go, it relies to the network browser service's ability to discover "things". In an Active Directory situation, the network browser should connect to the DC to find out resources, but I can be wrong since the "network browser" I know is from XP days.

zzz2496

We don't use DHCP. All addresses are static.

...more tomorrow

For whatever reason, I still have connectivity to my network resources 10.x and to my equipment on 0.x. The alternate IP has been set for over 12 hours. I don't know why it's still working. Sooner or later however, it's gonna quit.