Scenario:
Person A is on their laptop using wifi, and everything is fine and dandy. Person B is on their iTouch, and Person C is on a desktop via ethernet. Person D gets on their own laptop via wifi and opens a browser. Person A's laptop starts displaying DNS not found or w/e. Same issue for Person B,C, and even D. But when Person D gets off their laptop, the problem goes away.

[Edited on April 23, 2011 at 10:38 AM. Reason : halp please]

4/23/2011 10:31:30 AM

Peculiar. My first thought was that maybe person D has vicious spyware that's bwning your router.

[Edited on April 23, 2011 at 10:49 AM. Reason : Is it reproducible?]

4/23/2011 10:47:20 AM

Make sure both computers have unique IPs.

4/23/2011 11:03:37 AM

^^If by reproducible you mean it happens every time we try, then yes.

^you mean like ipconfig it to check the IP? If they are the same, what should I do?

4/23/2011 11:09:59 AM

Yes. If they're the same, release and renew for both computers.

4/23/2011 11:15:47 AM

Yeah sounds like Person D may have a static IP set?

On Person A and C open up two command prompts and run one of each:

ping -t 4.2.2.2
and
ping -t 192.168.1.1 [if this is your router's ip]

Then have Person D do what they normally do to knock everyone off. If you start getting request timed out on the two ping tests to 4.2.2.2 only then maybe spyware? If both tests immediately start timing out then you know the issue is with the private lan.

If there's a period of time where you can use D's laptop before it loses connectivity run the same two tests. See if it drops connection to the router or just to the world.

4/23/2011 1:59:44 PM

^will definitely try tonight when i'm over there, and report back

4/23/2011 2:11:34 PM

i would say person D has a static IP and the router/dnsserver is just freaking out when they connect because that IP belongs to someone else.

But yeah definitely do the ping -t 192.168.1.1 test and you'll quickly see the issue.

4/23/2011 5:38:07 PM

well I couldn't recreate the problem...oh well...magic IT fairies must've been here again

4/23/2011 8:14:59 PM

i'd tell person b to sell their itouch and get an ipod touch

4/23/2011 8:25:04 PM

i thought it sounded funny

4/23/2011 11:18:58 PM

^^^^That doesn't make any sense. If someone tries to take the same address from the router they'll either get denied access or kick the original IP address off.

I think the problem is that someone has their ip address set to the gateway (or the default gateway is set wrong) so everyone is trying to access the internet through one of your machines, which don't have DNS servers.

[Edited on April 27, 2011 at 2:05 PM. Reason : ]

4/27/2011 2:04:48 PM