Domain computers frequently losing domain connection

[calmiyatake]

We recently installed a CISCO RV110W wireless router to on small Windows 2008 Domain environment.   The person who donated the router to our church configured it with 2 vlans (private at 10.10.100.x and public at 192.168.1.x) for wired /wireless access with 2 seperate subnets.  We always had a wired domain network so the router was inserted to allow us to have wireless public network.  

The individual who donated the router also stated that he configured the router to distribute IP addresses to both vLans (public as well as private) even though we had an existing DHCP server on the private network.  At the time, we had a DHCP and DNS server on the domain.   When he setup the router to distribute IP addresses (DHCP services) we removed the DHCP server (so as not to have any IP distribution conflicts) and maintained the DNS server on the private domain network.   He indicated that the DNS service on the router was disabled and therefore should not pose an issue for DNS resolution.  All our private domain servers have static IP addresses and all private domain workstations/servers have static DNS IP entries but dynamic IP assignments that should be coming from the router.

A few months later we started to notice a problem on the private domain workstations.  They all began losing domain server connections randomly.   A simple shutdown and power on/login solved the problem.  Symptoms are verified by pinging the server name and getting an "outside IP" address vs the static IP address assigned to the server.  NSlookup also shows that the server IP is not the static assigned address.  After shutting down and powering backup/logging in all is well again and ping and nslookup show appropriate results.  So, something has disconnected the connection to the server until a full shutdown and startup is conducted.  Internet access appears to work fine, however.

We have reviewed the DNS Server (although no changes have been made to the server either before the router was inserted or after) to ensure that the settings were proper.   The DNS server has a single zone on the wired network subnet.  Since we do not have any private domain devices on the public subnet there is no DNS entry for the public side.  

We need to verify the configurations are appropriate at the router.  How can we check the router?   The individual who donated and configured the router is not available anymore.  I have been told that the Cisco RV110W can be setup to be a DNS server.  If that is the case, could the problem be caused by the DNS resolutions at the router?   We need to determine if that is happening.

Can someone help?   We are not familiar with this router 

Thank you

[paul driver]

Hello

 They all began losing domain server connections randomly

This could be due to the dns not updating correctly not scavenging stale records and then possibly having two ip addresses for the same A record thus AD doesn't recognise the ip associated with the dns name of the pc and when you shutdown and restart this initiates a dns update and all works accordingly again

When you did an ipconfig /all on the workstation what settings did you get, you say you received dns server ips that were not the ones statically configured in the network adapter?

Do you know where the dhcp server ip came from?

Do you have access to the router and if so can you post the running configuration of it.

res

Paul

[calmiyatake]

We only have one DHCP server and it is the router.  The Cisco router dynamically assigns IP addresses to all private and public devices.

I did an NSLOOKUP of the server from the workstation, it resolves to 98.130.x.x.  What is interesting is that the subnet also seems to reside in our DNS server under a host record "www".  It is the only entry in that subnet.  All the other records all have 10.10.100.x addresses, as they should.  None of the private devices have any IP addresses other than 10.10.100.x.

We do not host a website nor do we have Web servers. We DO have web hosting serviced by an external company. Could this be the source of our problem ...although I don't see how this association could affect false IP assignments to our private computers.

[pwwiddicombe]

output from "ipconfig /all" for both server and one of the workstations would be quite instructive. 

I wonder if it's possible you are registering on a non-local domain controller, and the name of your server might happen to be non-unique to wherever the AD/Wins server is pointing?  The outputs above might give us that indication.

[pwwiddicombe]

Do you have multiple NIC's in the servers?  When you say you get "outside addresses" being discovered for these, do you mean you get 192.168,1,x addresses, or other public addresses?

If you have 2 NIC cards in these, then it's likely NetBios/Netbeui is bound to both NICs unless otherwise specified; and they will advertise/register both these addresses.  Unbind the MS protocols from the public side. 

Note - if you actually WANT these to be available on the public/wireless range, then you might have to reconsider your strategy.

[calmiyatake]

Our server only uses one nic.  We are a small church.  The outside address that is being resolved for the server is 98.130.x.x.  The only subnets configured at the router are 192.168.x and 10.10.100.x.  The domain servers all have static ip addresses in the 10.10.100.x subnet.