IP Conflict?
IP conflict?
I came in to work today to find that my DNS server has an “IP conflict” message appearing down in the system tray. Because I have my network configured to dish out IP addresses via a DHCP server, I knew what the problem was–someone had changed their network adapter settings to a static IP address and had set it to the same IP address as my DNS server.
Because my users do not have administrative rights to their desktop, I knew it could not be one of my users–it had to be a student who has administrative rights to their laptop.
We have had this problem in the past as students are always looking for ways to circumvent our network to bypass our proxy/firewall/filtering devices. This time, when manually setting their IP address to the same as our internal DNS server, anybody on the network who was looking for something on the Internet was requesting this student’s laptop to “resolve” the domain name (i.e. www.yahoo.com resolves to IP address 216.109.112.135) and this laptop did not know what do so it gives a “Page Cannot Be Displayed” error message. This laptop virtually halted our network because it was trying to reroute the internet requests through his computer and not through the properly configured DNS server!
After shutting down all of the wireless access points, I did subdue the issue and cut the culprit out of the path to the Internet. At this point, I am compelled to keep the wireless access points shut off until the students learn to “play by the rules.”
We, as a school, are committed to appropriate education. We have to provide appropriate guidance and protection for our students. Our school has installed the devices (proxy servers, filtering software, firewalls, etc) to help keep the “bad” stuff from our otherwise safe network. There will always be someone who will try to thwart the efforts that we strive to uphold (either from within or from the outside).
It is my duty to keep our investments safe–both our students and our network.