I've been working on this for a month with two other professional IT guys and we're all stumped...

I'll try and be brief and precise.

Basically, about a month ago we installed a new VPN router in our office and changed all of our private IP addresses from 192.xxx.xxx.xxx to 10.xxx.xxx.xxx.

Then everything went downhill.

Now we're dropping packets all the time and getting "request timed out" messages like you've never seen before. We've tried everything the three of us can think of (so many things I can't remember them all) and it just gets worse. It's particularly frustrating because we use QuickBooks, so if you lose the connection even for a moment it boots you out of the program, and you have to reload it and start all over. Sometimes people will get booted up to 15 times a day, and it seems to be random times (i.e. two computers are never booted at the same time).

Here's the basic setup.

Internet > Linksys RV042 VPN Router > 8-Port Switch >
Port 1: "Server"
Port 2, 3, 4...etc: Other switches and PC's.

I'll be honest, the server is nothing more than a CPU running Windows XP professional, I didn't set it up. We just got a real server but I don't want to set it up until we get this bug hammered out. The other 7 computers are running either Vista or XP. I know you'll probably need more information so just ask and I'll get it for you.

I am literally ready to stage an accident and blow the whole thing up and start over. I appreciate everyone's help, I know there's a solution, but it's totally beyond me.

Thanks in advance.

Everyone in your network getting booted at some time or another? Or is it just the same users all the time? Wouldn't happen to have some duplicate ips assigned somewhere in the network would you?

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

What was the purpose of changing your ip?

Are these static assignments or are you using the dhcp server on the vpn router?

What dns server are you using?

How many switches in addition to the one you list and how deep?

And what do you mean "two computers are never booted at the same time? That sounds wacky and could very well be the source of your problems: no master browser list.

Imagine the power of knowing how to internet search
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No duplicate IP's.

What I mean is that I'll get booted from QuickBooks but the person in the office next to me won't, then later the person across the hall will get booted but I won't, etc...

We had to change IP's because of a new point-of-sale software we're using. They required the new VPN router with a specific 10.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address.

The router assigns IP's via DHCP, and all computers are set to "obtain IP automatically".

There's only one more layer of switches after the 8-port one.

You'll have to forgive my inexperience, in a small business whoever knows the most about IT becomes the IT guy. That's me in this case and I'm still a novice at most of it, so when you say "master browser list" I'm not sure what you mean. I was reading about it and it sounds like that could be the issue. How can I check?

Are the dropped packets and "request timed out" errors all related to communications with the server connected to router port #1, or do the same problems occur with Internet traffic as well?

Your quickbooks issue doesn't sound like a network issue but a quickbooks licensing issue. How many licenses do you have? You can get this by going to Help and about in quickbooks.

Just because you add user network access does not mean you get to have more quickbook accesses. That is where you have to purchase more quickbook licenses.

To clarify the router is giving out the 10.x.x.x ips, correct? No problem there.

Do a ipconfig /all on your pc and post the results.

How are you determining you are "dropping packets"?

The "request timed out" means your DNS/name resolution is not configured correctly which means machines can't find each other.

FYI MS computers designate one computer to hold the master list of all. This is referred to as the master browser list. All machines consult it to talk to each other. But this doesn't appear to be your issue.

Imagine the power of knowing how to internet search
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Teachin...

No the dropped packets and "request timed out" errors are related to the internet, as well as connections to the server.

So when I ping either the server or google I'll get those errors.

Request timed out doesn't necessarily mean packets are getting dropped, the echo reply could be getting blocked by a firewall.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

We have five QuickBooks licenses. No more than 5 are ever using the program at one time.

I suppose I thought dropping packets and "request timed out" was the same thing. I guess not though. (I'm learning a lot today.)

Since the computers are figured to obtain their IP's automatically, they just use the same DNS's that the gateway uses, the ones that were provided to us by our ISP. Do I have to configure some sort of internal DNS?

How can I cut and paste the ipconfig /all results from the command prompt?

Also, I did configure the server to be the domain master browser, so we'll see if that does anything.

Oh,I also forgot to mention that the server has a static IP because it hosts a website. Though it's IP is outside the range assigned by the routers DHCP.

Guess you could check old host files and wins settings or lmhosts files. Check gateway settings too again. Look at taskman network graph or turn off all but one computer and try. Might be a chattering nic somewhere. Set up perfmon logs to see for nic activity too much. See any router logs for activity. Use wireshark for detailed info on traffic. You need to try to half split this issue.

Could be a crummy switch and you have exceeded the backplane.

"Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, are in my top 10

You are hosting a web site on the same lan your corporate accounting software is on?

Really bad security design.

Is the workstation dns the same as the gateway or is it the isps listed dns servers?

You have two issues here. One is lan and one is wan.

Let's work on just the quickbooks/lan issue for now.

Start with posting your ipconfig /all.
Go to run and type cmd and hit enter
type ipconfig /all > test.txt
type exit to close the cmd window
open the test.txt file and copy/paste the contents into a post here.

In the meantime open up another cmd window. type ping [quickbooks pc ip address] -t

This will continueously ping that pc. Are there dropped pings? You can do a control-c to stop the pinging but do this for some time to monitor.

Imagine the power of knowing how to internet search
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Teachin...