Keeping track of workstation IP address history

My network has two Win 2003 servers each running a DHCP service. This means that when a lease expires it can be a race to to find the first available address from either server so machines frequently change IP address.

I need to be able to keep track of the IP address history of each workstation on my network (300+ XP machines) for at least the previous 2 weeks. I know I can look up their present IP address in the DNS but I want a simple quick way to be able to check the IP a machine was using at any given time over the past fortnight.

Bob

This little script run as a startup script will log the current IP address of a workstation together with the date and time to a log file on the local C:\

With a little bit of tweeking it can be modified to store it on a central server with machine names etc. in seperate log files for each day, or in seperate log files for each machine etc.

It's very badly written, I knocked it up sometime ago from various examples of other scripts on the net for a specific purpose when I was doing some troubleshooting, but it works.

Code:

---

strcomputer = "."
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
    & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    ("Select * From Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration Where IPEnabled = True")
for each objitem in colitems
strIPAddress = Join(objitem.IPAddress, ",")
next

IP = stripaddress

strFile = "C:\IPaddressLog.txt"
strText = date & " " & time & " " & IP

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If objFSO.FileExists(strFile) Then
Else
  Set objFile = objFSO.CreateTextFile(strFile)
End If

Const ForAppending = 8
Set objTextFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile (strFile, ForAppending, True)
objTextFile.WriteLine(strText)
objTextFile.Close

WScript.Quit

---

I would also strongly recommend you got to DHCP reservations. Since most schools will have sufficiently large an IP range that they don't need to use DHCP for anything other than passing out centralised config then DHCP reservations will solve your problem. That way you should never have to worry about the problem at all.