[X-Newbies] Can't connect to internet?

[Steven Rogers]

On Sep 7, 2005, at 11:45 PM, Mark Taintor wrote:

> My college age son called me tonight frustrated because his iBook  
> (running Tiger - not sure what version) doesn't want to connect to  
> the internet now. It worked earlier in the evening, but not now.  
> When he goes to the networking  location in his system preferences  
> he gets this message: Your cable for internet is connected but your  
> computer does not have an IP address and could not connect to the  
> internet. I had him try to restart and he got the following  
> message: 10.1.101.28 in use by 00:08:a1:16:9e:55, dhcp server  
> 10.1.0.222.

He should make sure that the network configuration is set to use DHCP  
and not a specified IP address.

One of the things that can cause this kind of behavior (particularly  
in a dorm) is when a bunch of newly arrived people in the dorm are  
plugging in Linksys routers and such, and some plug the LAN wire into  
the WAN port of the router. Then a bunch of DHCP servers come on  
line, a bunch of devices get conflicting IP addresses, and everyone  
is generally hosed. If that is happening, other people on the network  
should be seeing problems also, but perhaps not immediately.

SR