Hello. This is my first post. Please be kind if I have not phrased my question(s) in the proper format.

I work in a University and we use DHCP w/ MAC filtering for resident hall students.

With Vista laptops, I've noticed that when we connect in the room, we connect to "Multiple Networks (Private)", though they are all using the same IP and the lease expiration is only a few seconds or minutes apart.

Lately when students unplug/replug their ethernet connection, a few strange things are happening.

1) An additional network is added to the list of "Multiple Networks" that I am now connected to, all with the same IP, etc... I can merge them all and eventually no more pop up.

2) They get dropped from our DHCP pool, losing their 129 IP and reverting back to a 10 IP as if they never applied for the resident hall internet service (once they apply, Symantec firewall is installed to make sure windows updates are on, and that SAV is updated, and of course to monitor any suspicious bandwidth activity) Then, we have to reapply them to get them back to a 129 IP.

3) They get an "IP Conflict" message, that another computer has the IP, even though we see NONE on our list.


The leases are for 5 days. I am curious as to whether these "Multiple Networks" are causing problems with the lease, for example, when Network 1 expires, Network 2, 3, etc. still have the IP address so Network 1 cannot renew. Maybe I'm wrong though.

This is very frustrating. We've tried disabling ipv6, teefer2 (which messed up Symantec Firewall from doing its job so it had to be reenabled), and I've replicated the problem many times and have captured the network activity during the process, but I still have no real solution as to how to prevent this problem.

We probably have about 3,000+ Vista laptops connecting to our network right now, so WE are truly guinea pigs in "The Vista Experiment"


Any help would be GREATLY APPRECIATED! This is extremely frustrating considering the # of clients needing assistance every couple days. We have never had this issue when XP was the "OS du jour".

Thanks again.