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Background: Recently I had an issue with my in home PC network. The resolution was very simple but it took a lot of trouble shooting and head scratching to reach.

I’m posting it here because while searching for a solution, I found several people with the same type of problem but the suggested resolutions were far to complicated or were overkill in most cases. And by the way, didn’t solve the issue.

Problem: Intermittent network connectivity between computers.

Notes:

• There were no issues reaching the internet on any computers or devices
• About 5 PC’s on the network and several wireless devices (e.g. laptops, smart phones w/wifi, psp)
• Gigibit Switch (serving 3 of the 5 wired PC’s only)
• One PC acting as a File Server
• Nintendo Wii

Activities that did not solve the problem:

• Rebooted router several times
• Rebooted switch several times
• Created firewall rules on file server and individual PC’s security software
• Disabled windows firewall
• Disable security program on file server and individual PC’s
• updated firmware on the router
• Searching the web for solutions

Solution: I sat down with my 11 year old son to play the Wii. He informed me that he had been receiving an error message about Internet Connectivity for the past few days. This was not an uncommon issue with the Wii. However, loading the Wii up with a static IP address instead of having the Wii use DHCP, had solved the problem for long period of time.

When we looked at the Wii network settings, I noticed that the static IP that had previously been loaded, was the same IP address that my file server was using. This IP address was fresh in my mind because of  all the router and firewall logs Id read while troubleshooting the issue. There were never any IP Address conflict messages from the File Server.

I changed the static IP address assigned to the Wii until I found one that it would except. I have not had the intermittent problem since.

Theory: So it appears that although the Wii had been assigned a static IP address and the Wii was not in use most of the time, the router decided to issue this same address to my file sever which was set up for DHCP.

For some reason, when the Wii made attempts on its own to reach the Internet (for email, system updates, etc), it caused a conflict with the file server which was using the same IP address. The Router in my opinion should have denied the Wii any level of access to an ip address which had been assigned and was in use by the file server.

Solution Summary: Make sure every device on the network has its own IP address.