At office we have a DSL connection. Next, traffic flows to a Sonicwall router, and then on to a 10 port hub. Only 7 of these ports on this hub is being used. We have a DHCP server set up with auto IP addressing, etc. Recently, one of the computers on IP address 192.168.1.2 had stopped accessing the internet. I had thought something was wrong with the computer, so, I manually changed the IP address to 192.168.1.10 and restarted the router. All other 6 computers grabbed their IP addresses and this 7th computer got 192.168.1.10. Now, this 7th computer can get on the internet and connect to most of the other computers on the network, but cannot list the other computers on the network. (BTW there are two workgroups, one local and one in another city). The second workgroup in the other city cannot be browsed by this 7th computer. At the same time, one of the other computers, after I restarted the router, was assigned the 192.168.1.2 address. It of course cannot get on the internet. Is this a router problem? So basically I have two problems - and IP address that will not let me get on the internet, and when entering a manual IP address (and subnet, gateway, etc) I cannot browse the network like I use to be able to. Thanks for any help.

It sounds like you have a bad router, yes. If the only commonality between the two PCs that used/use 192.168.1.2 is that neither of them can reach the Internet through this address, but they can through other addresses, then for some reason this address is blocked. If they can talk to the rest of the local network (we'll deal with the remote network in a moment) then it's nothing so simple as two devices accidently sharing the same IP address. Most routers allow you to define the range of IP Addresses used for the LAN. Go into your router configuration menu and see if you can exclude 192.168.1.2 from the list of assignable IP addresses. That should take care of your immediate problem. Now, as for the remote network, depending on how it's been set up normally there's a range of "allowed" IP addresses that a network can connect to via VPN or whatever you're using. The remote network may not recognize 192.168.1.10 as an "allowed" remote connection. This has to be programmed into the router on that end of the connection and VPN set up to pass packets back and forth. Check your documentation to make sure this address is OK with the existing parameters. Also check your net mask and see if it's compatible with the remote network on this PC.

Awesome, thanks for the help. I was "hired" to come into this business and check out their setup and everyonce in a while and if something happens that the office personell there cannot figure out, then they come to me. Usually its no big deal, but I havnt been working for them long enough to really understand their current setup (especially their VPN setups). Ill post more info when I work on it tonight.