We have an ESXi server with an IP of 10.1.1.7 that is on our network and it has weird intermittent ping timeout problems. It pings sometimes and sometimes times out. We had this issue with our file server on the 10.1.1.3 IP. It was getting so bad I had to switch IP's to 10.1.1.4 and all our problems went away. I am debating switching my ESXi server IP to 10.1.1.6 since I have that IP is open ( I have reserved 10.1.1.1/24 for servers and networking devices) but that is a temporary solution. Any ideas what causes that? I have thought DNS for quite some time. We recently had a network outage on one of our DNS servers and it randomly changed from static to dynamic and screwed up our DNS. Another weird problem is googles DNS IP (8.8.8.8) had put itself as a forwarder in our 2008 R2 DNS server with notice. Maybe there is some connection between the two? What I have done so far is take one of our DNS servers offline one by one to see if connectivity to 10.1.1.7 comes back, it did not. I have also have restarted several networking devices such as our ASA our DHCP but nothing changed. No other device is taking 10.1.1.7. Thanks for any ideas.

Might ask them here. http://communities.vmware.com/index.jspa Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

I did but I wanted to ask here as well because this all started with our DNS servers and our Windows Server 2003 file server needing an IP change because of ping issues.

Switching addresses on the same subnet shouldn't have any effect unless the address is already in use. This sounds like a routing loop issue to me. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

is there any checks you can suggest to me that I can try? If I change any device to 10.1.1.3 (the corrupt IP, or so I call it) I can't ping it. Whether it be a Windows 7 laptop or our 03 Server DHCP/File Server.

Difficult to know whether the loop (if it even exists) is physical or virtual. Was this ever working? if so I look at the last few changes as suspect. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

So you don't think it has anything to do with DNS? It was working before (as of 4 months ago) and no changes have been made to the server or the network. I should check ARP cache. I cleared all DNS cache and made sure the A records didn't have a mac address for that IP and it was not a static entry. Maybe I'll do a wireshark traffic sniff to see what happens when I have a device on 10.1.1.3/7 to see what they are trying to do when they are on that IP.

No, ping has no reliance what so ever on DNS. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

60 2.764538 Flextron_5c:e9:ba Dell_2a:9b:24 ARP 42 Who has 10.1.1.7? Tell 10.1.1.1 (duplicate use of 10.1.1.1 detected!) this is what I see a lot in wireshark..

Might look through some of these. https://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&source=hp&q=wireshark+duplicate+use+of+ip+detected+site:wireshark.org&pbx=1&oq=wireshark+duplicate+use+of+ip+detected+site:wireshark.org&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1850l9081l5l9332l19l3l16l0l0l0l441l697l2-1.0.1l17l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=5b81457ce645ca0e&biw=1280&bih=766 Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

maybe there is a duplicate mac address on the network that is causing this?

Seems unlikely unless someone is doing mac spoofing with some device. Regards, Dave Patrick .... Microsoft Certified Professional Microsoft MVP [Windows]

If you have a network loop you should look for excessive broadcasts. For example I had an issue like this and what I did was I logged on the management inteface of the switch and saw which port had the most broadcast . It was easy to spot because the broadcast number was a lot greater then other ports. So look for that. I agree with Dave and belive it is a network loop somewhere...Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.