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My IP Address in my college network is constantly taken away..

No operating system will let you use someone else's IP address. It may not boot you out, but it will NOT work correctly because EVERY machine HAS to have a different IP address otherwise the packets WILL get screwed up.

I am just guessing here, but I guess it is YOU who is wrong. You are hard coding your IP address to something. Then everyone else is using DHCP and gets a new IP whenever they log on; thus eventually it hit's the IP address you have.

You can NOT prevent others from manually entering in an IP address from your computer.. Very hard to reach through the network lines and stop them.
 
OP: If that is the behavior of the static IP address and you have verified it, and talked to your college network admins, then you are complaining in the wrong place. Talk to Apple, and file a bug report. [Make sure you have the latest OS updates first.]

Or get an access point extender that behaves like the mswin on the college network side and you can administer your side wireless clients. [Or change the static IP to one that is not currently in use.]
 
aningbo said:
Is this really that hard to understand?
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No, not really.

The problem: your school has chosen a poor method for distributing IP addresses in the hostels.

One symptom of the problem: duplicate IPs are occurring, and you're not happy with how Mac OS X handles them

You want a remedy for the specific symptom that you're having, while others are offering you solutions to the actual problem. That's just how people work.

But to answer your question, there isn't a button or plist setting somewhere that I know of that tells Mac OS X to handle IP conflicts in the manner that you want.
 
OP just to summarize:

There is no DHCP server on the network you are using; students are free to choose their own IP address within a designated subnet.

If a windows/OSX user enters an IP that is in use (on a windows machine) he will be told it is in use - so he will pick another, and another, until he finds a free one.

If a windows user enters an IP that is in use on a OSX machine instead of getting a warning that the IP is in use and he should seek another - you will be kicked out and forced to find another IP.

I would suggest talking to apple and saying you are unhappy with the way OSX operates in a network with static IP addresses.
 
alright. looks like i'll have to file a bug report to apple. i thought it was possible.. but anyways thank you so much for all your over whelming responses.

i guess mac isn't full prove after all :( ..it keeps throwing me out.
 
aningbo said:
alright. looks like i'll have to file a bug report to apple. i thought it was possible.. but anyways thank you so much for all your over whelming responses.

i guess mac isn't full prove after all :( ..it keeps throwing me out.
Click to expand...

The thing is that this isn't a bug. Apple is protecting you from not having a wonky network connection with 2 devices with the same IP address or potentially knocking the other device offline. They will not fix it. In windows if 2 devices have the same IP address, one or both devices get thrown out until the conflict goes away. Windows may not tell you, because it will try to stay connected, but in the end you are not connected to the network. Getting the campus, as others have said, to use DHCP will solve all the issues where the gateway server hands out addresses and does not give 2 devices the same address.
 
lostless said:
The thing is that this isn't a bug. Apple is protecting you from not having a wonky network connection with 2 devices with the same IP address or potentially knocking the other device offline. They will not fix it. In windows if 2 devices have the same IP address, one or both devices get thrown out until the conflict goes away. Windows may not tell you, because it will try to stay connected, but in the end you are not connected to the network. Getting the campus, as others have said, to use DHCP will solve all the issues where the gateway server hands out addresses and does not give 2 devices the same address.
Click to expand...

I might be wrong but I think you are misinterpreting the situation.

Windows is protecting the user from not sharing an IP address as if someone tries to take an IP registered to a Windows client it will be told that the IP is in use. Whilst the IP of an OSX client is reported as unregistered - which lets another machine use it.

However the real fault lies with the system admins who are letting college students assign their own IPs
 
illy123 said:
I might be wrong but I think you are misinterpreting the situation.

Windows is protecting the user from not sharing an IP address as if someone tries to take an IP registered to a Windows client it will be told that the IP is in use. Whilst the IP of an OSX client is reported as unregistered - which lets another machine use it.

However the real fault lies with the system admins who are letting college students assign their own IPs
Click to expand...

I see what you mean now. I tried this in my home network with Vista and had no issues. Vista would allow me to assign my computer with the address of my mac but then gave me a warning and kicked Vista offline. The mac remained connected with no warning. I havent run into this on XP, so it may handle IP conflicts differently.
 
vista was kicked offline and mac remain??? this is funny.. seriously.

Under that condition, was Mac's IP address manually configured? i assume vista's IP address was manually configured.
 
lostless said:
I see what you mean now. I tried this in my home network with Vista and had no issues. Vista would allow me to assign my computer with the address of my mac but then gave me a warning and kicked Vista offline. The mac remained connected with no warning. I havent run into this on XP, so it may handle IP conflicts differently.
Click to expand...

Just tried this with Windows 7 and had the same experience, OS X stayed online whereas my Windows 7 machine lost it's internet connection. There wasn't a popup warning of anything though, it just showed that there was a problem and that there is no internet access. This is when OS X is connected first and I then connect/change the IP of Windows 7.

If I do it the other way around, Windows 7 stays connected and OS X pops up the error message and stays offline.
 
I am starting to think you might would want to try a new test account to see if you get the same results. This way you can trace down software or hardware issues. Plus read the article Wireless dropping problems with Mac OS 10.6.3 update, a simple fix and links in the article to see one of those hints help you.

Plus I am also wondering if your college is doing DHCP reserved system. Check with the Admins to see if they are doing static or DHCP reserved And set you wireless to what they tell you, not just any Joe around you but the Admins that administer the Wireless system.
 
something is really wrong here. i need to check it out from the scratch again.

i'll test it out again with my friends' laptops asap. its pretty late now. gotta get some sleep.

thanx
 
aningbo said:
vista was kicked offline and mac remain??? this is funny.. seriously.

Under that condition, was Mac's IP address manually configured? i assume vista's IP address was manually configured.
Click to expand...

I also just tried this, with the same result. Using a SL (10.6.3) machine and an XP machine, both with manually configured IP's. Whichever machine is assigned the IP first, keeps it. They both get pop-ups in either case, but the end result is the first owner remains owner, while the new guy ends up with a shut down interface.
 
why is your IP address 10.6.3?

my mac even if it is the owner, gets thrown out. m using the latest version.
 
OP - if you want to get into this deeper, see http://www.certmag.com/read.php?in=3924 and also the RFC 3227 (e.g., http://tools.ietf.org/search/rfc5227). RFCs are the quasi standards for the internet protocols.

If you do choose to research it further, you may be in luck since the author of the RFC works/worked for Apple and may be willing to email you some suggestions. But first, you should pursue your network administrators and make them cognizant of the links above (they don't appear to be "administering" the network well). Other links appear if you search for "release static IP address in case of conflict" or similar phrase (no quotes is preferred in the search so the search engine can interpret the phrase more liberally.)

RFC authors are "Gurus" and are very busy people, so first, learn as much as you can and debug the problem with your network admins before contacting him. If you do contact him, clearly separate out facts and speculation.
 
thanx so much guys. really appreciate your inputs. i'll see what i can do from my side..

thanx again.
 
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