Hi All,
How to handle the problem of IP conflict when two nodes (exactly having the same network configuration) join a wireless network.

I want a solution for this problem without changing the IP address for any one of them.

The nodes can not change their IP address for the following reasons:
1- The user has no administrator privileges to change his network configuration.
2- The user doesn't know what is the IP address and how to be changed.

Is there some hint or article that I can read that helps me in solving and finding a solution for this problem?



Thanks for your support
Bassam

Easy, all the clients should use DHCP instead of static configurations. There's no way to resolve a conflict between two statically configured IPs, that's why DHCP was created!

What about if:
1- The user has no administrator privileges to change his network configuration.
2- The user doesn't know what is the IP address and how to be changed.


I am sure there is someway to solve this problem

There is no problem, you have to use DHCP. That's what it was created for.

Guy,
I think you are not able to catch my Idea. It is better if I take an example from our life:

Suppose, a guy with a mobile node has joined a foreign wireless network after he was located in his original wireless network. When he switched on his wireless laptop he got an IP conflict message because of another mobile node has already joined this wireless netwok before.

Now, the later guy doesn't know what to do in order to access the wirless network for the following reasons:

1- The guy might don't have Administrator privilges so he can assign a differen IP to his mobile node or he can change to DHCP.

2- The guy is just a normal user which he doesn't know what is network configuartion and what is IP address or DHCP and how to be changed.

And to clear, I have designed and developed a special gateway for a wireless network that enables the mobile nodes from accessing the network and the Internet with any static IP address and it works perfectly, but I faced the problem of redundant IP address.

I am sure it should be a solution or a number of Ideas to cop this obstacle, but I don't know from where should I start to read about it.

Seriously, there is no solution to your problem. What you are talking about is the exact reason DHCP was developed.

There is no way to prevent a conflict if two machines with the same IP join the same network.

You have to run DHCP. I understand that you are concerned about users coming in with a static IP having a conflict, but that isn't your problem really. Also, the chances of a user having a laptop setup for a static IP wireless connection seems pretty unlikely to me.

Anyone running a wireless network, be it private or corporate, would have to be suicidal to try and use static addressing on it. The appeal of wireless networks is that you are free to have mobile stations come and go on your network without any physical connections to complicate things. Setting up a wireless network with static addressing would completely negate the benefits of the system.

So not only are we talking about the unlikely event of somebody coming in with a laptop setup for static IP wireless, but we are talking about multiple static wireless laptops, and not only that, but 2 of them having the same IP address! The likelihood of such an event occurring is so slight I wouldn't even consider it a concern.