[Voyage-linux] Detecting IP Conflicts

[Robert Rawlins - Think Blue]

Afternoon Guys,

 

I've got a system out in the field and we have intermittent connectivity
issues with it. The system is set to 'call home' every couple of minutes and
likewise we have a port forwarded on the remote network to allow us remote
SSH access.

 

The system runs just fine the most part, however every now and again we lose
touch for a few hours or sometimes a few days, no calls home and unable to
access the system remotely.

 

However, suddenly it comes back and we're able to connect. The system
appears to have been running fine, it's full of log data from my daemons and
suchlike so has not been turned off. I can also confirm that the internet
connection and local network appear to be just fine as other PC's connected
to the network appear to run fine.

 

Now, one of my concerns with this is that it's an IP address conflict and
that windows clients on the network are stealing the ip address of my system
and that is why we're losing touch.

 

After looking around this morning it appears that IP Conflicts in Linux are,
or at least were tricky to detect and diagnose due to the fact it doesn't
deal with ARP properly. I've been looking at this package here:
http://ipwatchd.sourceforge.net/ and thinking about installing it onto my
clients.

 

Can anyone offer any experience with this kind of thing? Do we have a better
way of detecting and preventing other network devices stealing our IP?
Assuming we don't have control over the network configuration?

 

Many thanks guys,

 

Rob

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