Am Fri, 06 Mar 2015 21:35:45 +0200 schrieb Alan McKinnon <alan.mckin...@gmail.com>:
> On 06/03/2015 20:45, Marc Joliet wrote: > > First of all, thanks to everybody who responded so far. > > > > I wanted preface my reply to Alan by mentioning that the local sysadmin made > > changes to the DHCP server that appear to have worked around whatever the > > issue > > is. > > > > I don't fully understand the error analysis (something to do with the DHCP > > client reaching a particular state and sending DHCP packets that something > > in-between it and the DHCP server doesn't like and that might result in > > vendor > > dependent behaviour), but what the DHCP server now does is tell the client > > to > > use the broadcast address as the DHCP server address (which is weird, > > because > > the DHCP clients always switch to the broadcast address after a timeout, > > but of > > course I'm no DHCP expert). The affected PCs have been working normally all > > day today. > > In light of what you say below: > > > I'd be interested to hear what your sysadmin has to say; dhcp is one of > those things that JustWork(tm) - it uses regular tcp and nothing funny > about it at all. The only thing normally between your NIC and the dhcp > server is a switch, so that's what I'd be looking at. That's also why I was confused about the whole thing and why I originally thought that it was either a power management issue or some sort of network problem. I'll see if I can ask when I'm there again next week. [...] > I wasn't aware you had e1000e hardware - those are about as reliable as > they come. I've used many of them and never had the slightest trouble at > all. By all means study up on firmware and driver options - if you don;t > know much about that area it's very illuminating to find out more. But > based on experience I'd say the chances of finding an oddity with e1000e > are slim, and I'd be looking at a misconfigured switch. That's pretty much what the sysadmin said, too, when I asked what he thought of the "power management issue" idea. > There are some strange switches out there that let you make crazy > configuration, like eg blanket drop all broadcast traffic on one or more > ports. That's where I'd be looking first. Yeah, that agrees with my instinct that it's most something to do with the switch. -- Marc Joliet -- "People who think they know everything really annoy those of us who know we don't" - Bjarne Stroustrup
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