"Rogue" DHCP Servers

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Okay, since I've gotten back to school, the network between all of the dorms that gives us usually great internet access has been back and forth between functionality and nonfunctionality.



After managing to get wireless access through an organization that's based quite close to where I am and looking at the IT discussion boards, I found that one particularly peeved user had discovered the problem (and he was using a Mac of course ). Glancing at the network status panel, he saw that the router IP address was of the home/consumer model configuration (192.168...etc.). If we renew the DHCP lease enough (which is easy in OS X) we eventually get an official university router which gives us access. Some people on Windows machines who couldn't switch their IP so easily/efficiently were getting downstream packets in excess of 1MB per second, and lots were scared that their HDs would be obliterated soon.



I am no network engineer, but how can something like this be arranged so easily? Is our network in the dorms just that completely awful?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    wmfwmf Posts: 1,164member
    Unfortunately, it's hard to prevent rogue DHCP servers. Your network administrator should be able track down whoever is causing the trouble and turn off their port.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    the biggest problem is that a lot of XP boxes have been showing up with "internet connection sharing" enabled. that turns your box into a DHCP server. since you're usually pretty damn close to people in your dorm, you hit their box first, and it assigns you a crap IP.



    but yeah, the network folks should be able to shut those people off pretty quickly. it's usually a beginning of the semester problem.



    unless you meant one of these.



  • Reply 3 of 7
    fred_ljfred_lj Posts: 607member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by tonton

    "Rouge" is what ladies put on their face to make them look like they're blushing/innocent. It's french for red.



    "Rogue" is the word you're looking for. It means undercover/hidden/roving.




    It's obvious you know very well what I meant and that you enjoy aggravating people. I am sorry if you have never spoken or written out something that was incongruous from what you were thinking.



    If one of the moderators could change the title of the thread it would be extremely helpful. And thank you all for the explanations -- not being a Windows-phile, this is interesting to know.
  • Reply 4 of 7
  • Reply 5 of 7
    The same thing happened at my school last year, happened badly. The best part was that it turned out that my Airposrt BS was one of the culprits. It's a really big pain in the ass though.
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