So I reviewed the other issue titled, "Internet Keeps Dropping" and while it seemed similar, it's definitely not identical. So here's my issue...late yesterday, the internet dropped for everyone at the company. I called our FiOS vendor who walked me through resetting their equipment and pinging it to discover it wasn't the problem. I decided to cycle the power on my firewall. I did that and in a few minutes, everyone's internet was back up again. Yay! I saved the day!
So this morning I come in, and one by one, multiple people report their internet isn't working. So I go to their machines and among the first six people, either unplugging/replugging their CAT5, flushing the DNS or releasing and renewing their IP address or some combination resolved the problem and they were able to get the internet to come back up. But five people just keep calling me...theirs keeps going down. Again, flushing their DNS and/or releasing and renewing their IP address works. But then a short bit later, here they come again reporting their internet is down yet again.
In the middle of all that I went online and read up on some DNS server issues and from what I can tell, all my DNS settings are correct. At lunch when almost everyone was out, I restarted the server that hosts the DNS functions so that I can at least rule that out. After lunch, three of my recurring issue people reported the issue again. I checked their ipconfig /all and for the DNS server some of them show 192.168.1.1. Our DNS server is 192.168.1.25. The super weird thing is, sometimes after it starts working again, I check their ipconfig /all listing and even though their internet is working, their DNS server shows the incorrect .1 address. I checked the switches to see if the nine people who have reported it were all plugged into one switch and the switch was going bad, but they were evenly distributed across our three switches. So I'm baffled. Multiple people keep dropping their internet connection yet 90% of the company is completely unaffected and haven't had a problem at all.
Just to make sure, I ran a virus scan on one of the internet dropping pc's and it came back clean. I'm running virus scan on the server now. Days like today make me wish I was a professional hockey player...or a lottery winner.
Oh yeah...Windows Server 2008 R2 and everyone on the floor has Windows 7.