Windows Tip: Resolving IP address conflicts

By Mitch Tulloch, MTIT Enterprises

A basic but often hard to troubleshoot issue that can arise on a TCP/IP network is an IP address conflict. This occurs when two computers on a network are assigned the same IP address, and this situation can arise in three different ways. First, you might misconfigure your network by manually assigning two computers the same static IP address. This is a common occurrence on smaller networks especially when computers are in a workgroup not a domain. Second, a
DHCP server on your network might assign an address to a client computer that conflicts with a static IP address assigned to some other network device such as a router or printer. And third, if you have two DHCP servers on the same subnet that have overlapping scopes, you're likely to get client computers with duplicate addresses.

What I've discovered is that troubleshooting these situations not only requires clear thinking but sharp eyesight as well. For example...

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