DHCP inactive leases

[Tolinrome]

I have a Windows 2003 Server running DHCP. I made about 20
reservations for network printers we have. I used the IP that was
already assigned to the printer by the DHCP server and just created a
reservation for it.

Now when I look at the Leased IP's for the scope I see that all the
reservations that I created, (except 2), says (inactive9. Why does it
say inactive if the lease isnt expired? All the client PC computers
also have reservations and it say active instead of inactive. Did I do
something wrong???

Thanks,
Tolinrome

 

[Tomasz Onyszko]

I have a Windows 2003 Server running DHCP. I made about 20
reservations for network printers we have. I used the IP that was
already assigned to the printer by the DHCP server and just created a
reservation for it.

Now when I look at the Leased IP's for the scope I see that all the
reservations that I created, (except 2), says (inactive9. Why does it
say inactive if the lease isnt expired? All the client PC computers
also have reservations and it say active instead of inactive. Did I do
something wrong???

No, but the network printer has to renew the lease to "fit" into the
reservation

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

I have always configured the printers with a static IP Address. Naturally,
the IP Address range that I use for the printers is not part of the
available scope....

HTH,

Cary

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

I have always configured the printers with a static IP Address.

So do I normally. That us, until last week when every single HP printer I
have (about 50 of them) decided to go looking for a DHCP server. Still
haven't figured out why....

Reservations it is for me now.

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

In the environment where I used to be ( in California ) we had about 55 HP
printers ( HP4000, HP4050 and HP4100 ). Never had a problem with them ( in
this aspect ). Did you contact HP or did you look at the print server for
any logs ( not sure what you would be looking for.... ).

Cary

 

[Andrew Mitchell]

In the environment where I used to be ( in California ) we had about 55 HP
printers ( HP4000, HP4050 and HP4100 ). Never had a problem with them ( in
this aspect ).

Neither have I. That's why this one was so confusing.

Did you contact HP or did you look at the print server for
any logs

Had a look at the print servers. Nothing strange there. The network traffic
logs didn't show any unusual traffic going to the printers (just SNMP and
print jobs. Nothing on port 23 or 80), so it doesn't look like an admin was
playing around and screwed things up.

( not sure what you would be looking for.... ).

The only thing that I can think of is that (possibly....) we got a power
surge that corrupted the flash RAM in the printers, so they reverted back to
the boot ROM (which IIRC is DHCP by default). I know the HP Procurve switches
will do this (the boot ROM bit - not DHCP). I've just never seen it with a
printer before.

We're going through a network redesign soon (reconfiguring VLANs etc) so all
the printers will need to be reconfigured for new subnets anyway. I've just
put them all on DHCP with reservations so that when we go through the
reconfig, I can do all the work from the DHCP server and not have to
reconfigure each printer individually. Just drop the DHCP lease back to 2
hours, reset the reservations and they should be fine.
(famous last words....................)

 

[Tomasz Onyszko]

I have always configured the printers with a static IP Address. Naturally,
the IP Address range that I use for the printers is not part of the
available scope....

I alway confifgure printers with DHCOP reservation we have more then
thousand printers in the network and most of them is in the remote
location - so in case of changing the IP or readdressing the network I
will have to change only DHCP scope and reservation and I don't need any
assistance or configuration on site

 

[Cary Shultz [A.D. MVP]]

Tomasz,

Good point. In that case it would make things a lot easier. This was a two
Site location where there was only 0.5 miles between the two building. So
there was no problem as far as that goes.

Cary