Question : Losing Connection Between Hosts

To summarize the difficulty in this issue this is a small business starting up and I just changed over our network to a brand new router & access point from an out of the box Verizon Westell 7500 modem/router and a brand new Dell PowerEdge server from an old custom built Windows XP server (if you want to call it that). I am having trouble figuring out which one of these items is causing the issue and it has left me pretty stumped so I thought I would give Experts Exchange a try.

Summary of the network:
Internet - Verizon DSL with dynamic IP address
Router - Linksys RVS4000
 - IP Address: 192.168.10.1
 - DHCP Pool: 192.168.10.10 - 192.168.10.50
Access Point - Linksys WAP200
 - IP Address: 192.168.10.2

Printer - HP LaserJet M2727NF
 - IP Address: 192.168.10.5 (wired & static)

Laptop - (SAC)
 - Windows XP Professional SP3 (32bit)
 - CONTROLS workgroup
 - Wireless (DHCP)

Laptop - (JRR-MOBILE)
 - Windows Vista Business SP1 (32bit)
 - CONTROLS workgroup
 - Wireless (DHCP)

Server - (NCSERVER)
 - Windows Server 2008 SP1 (32bit)
 - CONTROLS workgroup
 - Wired (static IP address of 192.168.10.3)

The issue I am having  is that the server becomes inaccessible from the laptop computers after a short period of inactivity with it over the network. For instance when we arrive in the morning and power up the computers they can access the server fine by means of opening a network shortcut to a "Projects" folder on the server (a shortcut to a "Network Place") that is placed on the Desktop or by simply browsing the network. However, if we work on the computer and do not interact with the network at all for roughly half an hour and then try to access that same network shortcut the server is no longer found. If I try to ping the server by host name it cannot be found on the network. However, if I ping the server by IP address my system somehow figures out the server and then I can ping it by host name and also access shared folders on it without issue. That is until another half hour or so goes by without activity then the issues repeat.

I noticed that when I have this issue with my system (JRR-MOBILE) and I can't contact the server over the network and can't ping by HOST NAME,  I will go back to the server and I can't ping my system either. Not by host name or IP address. But as soon as I ping the server by IP address from my system and it is discovered I can also then ping my system from the server by host name and IP address.

Since my system is running Vista the error messages in networking are slightly more informative so when I try to open my network shortcut to our "Projects" folder and it can't access the server I get the following error message message:
-----
Windows cannot find NCSERVER
Error Code: 0x0070035
The network path was not found
-----

Then if I click on the "Diagnose" button in that box I get the following message:
-----
Windows sent the request to the DNS server and the server responded that the name was unknown.
-----

First thing I will add is that none of these systems have trouble with internet access. Not even when the server is inaccessible. Internet is always fine. It also seems that connection to the printer from the laptops (wireless) to the printer (wired) is also fine during this period of inaccessibility with the server; so to me that kind of eliminated this being a wireless only issue.

Second thing I will add is that the last thing I did today was take all three systems completely off of the same network putting them all in different workgroups and removing any network settings and then finally one by one putting them all back in the same workgroup, configuring the network settings and network "zones" in Windows Vista and Server 2008 to make sure that all of the networking options (Network Discovery, File Sharing & even Public Folder Sharing) were all enabled and on and good to go. As far as I can tell this is all fine because they can all access and get to what I need them to until it hits that half hour or so mark. Also, no systems are using any firewall software except Windows Firewall and Network Discovery is an enabled exception on the server for that.

Finally the last thing I will add is that the server is really just a stock workgroup setup doing nothing more than sharing files & printers. In fact those are the only two roles enabled on the server. There is no domain, active directory, DNS or anything. And for file sharing purposes each user account that is used on the two laptops has a similar user account on the server.


Going off of the error message from my Vista system; is this really a DNS issue? Everything seems to respond well when using IP addresses; it kind of just looks like it is the host names that are causing issues. Maybe WINS? I am not real educated on DNS and WINS.

Any help or recommendations on where to look for other configuration issues would be greatly appreciated. I have been fighting with this for about three days now and I am getting quite frustrated with it. At the other office I work at I am used to SBS 2003 and 20 XP clients but setting this up with XP, Vista, Server 2008 and all new network hardware has thrown too many possibilities into the mix.

Answer : Losing Connection Between Hosts

Look, things should be like this:
1. Have an internal DNS responsible for your internal network, configured with the dns address provided by your ISP.
2. Have *only* 1 DHCP server in your network (use several server only in complex networks, with special configurations), configured to dynamically update DNS. All your server must have manual IP, and be left out of your DHCP scope (Set the scope like 192.168.1.10-192.168.1.253), and give your servers IP's from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.9, and usually your router 192.168.1.254. All others network equipments (printers, network scanners, access points) must be set up to use DHCP, but all of them should have a reservation in the DHCP server.

You don't need to manually add anything. (only the reverse lookup zone in the DNS, but you don't need it unless special conditions). Once the DNS is set up, every computer configured to use that DNS will update itself with A records in the DNS. Also, when DHCP hands out an IP, it should automatically update DNS.
Now, if you configure a computer in your network to use another dns server (the dns supplied by the ISP for example), your DNS will not see that computer, will not update it and problems will begin. Also, if you don't configure the DHCP to dinamically update DNS, same problems will happen.

Now, many new network admins panic when installing DNS because they don't see it updating. The thing is that it really takes some time, depending of the size of your network. Could take15 minutes, 30 minutes or maybe more for hosts starting to update in DNS. Also, many hosts update after 2 days in that host is powered down for 2 days, for example. And when they panic, they start messing up with the settings, manually updating and so on.
There is really nothing more to it. As long as you do everything right, it's all starting to work smoothly. But many problems appear if you use on some workstation another dns server, or if you don't configure your dns server to point to itself at the dns setting in IP settingon the NIC, if you forget to set DHCP to dynamically update, or other small mistakes that can cause trouble.
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