"Ping Server" returns wrong IP

[Jtrotta]

Hello all,

 

We have recently created 3 new wireless networks at our school. Everything seemed to work fine but now our windows 7 computers take a long time to log in. While troubleshooting I found 2 odd things.

 

1st- in command prompt when i do "ping server" most of the computers return the wrong IP address. They all give 1 of 4 IPs (the right IP, the IP to our Student wireless network, the IP to our faculty wireless or the Ip to our guest network). When searching this issue i found out this

 

" When you perform a ping that uses a name instead of an IP address, the name has to be resolved to an IP address. If the name is that of the server, the IP address is returned as an address from the network adapter that is at the top or bottom of the network bindings order. This usually will be the last network adapter that was installed, and this may not be the interface that you expect to be used. Therefore, the ping command returns an incorrect IP address." Ive tried this soultion and nothing changes. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/981953

 

However, after spending hours tinkering with the binding order in every order possible they all still comeback wrong. I've tried flushing DNS on the computers and still they come in at random each time (1 of the 4).

 

2nd- When i do "ipconfig/all" everything comes back correct. EXCEPT! that for the fact that the IP "lease obtained date" always has a crazy date some say 1879.

 

 

Any suggestions? Please and Thank you!!

[CyberNerd]

Any suggestions?

 

'interesting' NAT rules on you router/firewall would cause this.

[FN-GM]

Sounds like a DNS issue. Have a look at the records on the DNS servers and see what they look like.

[ZeroHour]

Check your DNS server, it sounds like it has multiple records for X server name. When you have multiple dns records for the same name round robin DNS applies which means it returns 1 of the 4 ip's and thats relatively random in order which is why you may see the ping change over time. Depending on how long the local machines DNS caches the entry (set on DNS server) it will be fixed to X server = X IP until the cache expires locally and it then will ask DNS for the current ip and then it will cache 1 of the 4 entries. If your server gets its ip's from DHCP your DHCP server can be set to automatically create/update the records each time a machine grabs an ip which could cause it to list multiple.

DHCP lease time is set on your DHCP server as well so you can set it to expire after 24 hours etc.

Edited August 27, 2015 by ZeroHour

[CyberNerd]

If it was a DNS problem the machine wouldn't be able to reply from the 'wrong' address.

 

..unless the server has multiple addresses

Edited August 27, 2015 by CyberNerd

[howartp]

Yes it would.

 

If you ping a server name and DNS returns the wrong IP address, if that IP address is a valid IP for some other accessible device on the network then that device will respond to the ping?

[CyberNerd]

Yes it would.

 

If you ping a server name and DNS returns the wrong IP address, if that IP address is a valid IP for some other accessible device on the network then that device will respond to the ping?

 

yes that would make sense.