IP Conflict

By Daniel Collins

Image from here.

Every Computer or device on a network must have a unique IP address. Routers, Switches and Servers are assigned with “static” IP addresses. This allows a network administrator to carry out smoother troubleshooting in case of any issues.

I was sent to one of our client’s office to resolve an issue where the user could not connect to her department folder on their file sharing server. I was there from morning to the afternoon figuring out on how to solve this problem. I asked the lady to give me access to the server room which she did, but she didn’t have the password to log in to the server.

Because I knew the server’s IP, I started to ping the IP address of the server using Windows command tool. I realized that the device using this IP was active. I was thinking, but how can I ping the server’s IP but cannot access it? This meant that the IP address I was pinging was assigned to another device and not the server.

After I went back in the lady’s office, I saw a newly installed MikroTIK router connected to the network. I asked the lady, this is new, when was this setup? She replied… ‘’ The ISP just dropped it in this morning.’’

Then, I turned on my laptop connected it to the network, opened my web browser and typed in the IP address of the server again… ‘192.168.12.7’. This logged me directly into the MikroTIK router! My suspicions were proven to be correct. Then it was easy.

I resolved the issue by changing the static IP on the MicroTIK device from 192.168.12.7 to 192.168.12.13

The IP conflict was resolved. All I did was to restart the server and the router in resolving the issue.

The lady could now continue her work.

Again, NATC saves the day!