Tech Forum

Here's a weird one...

Wifi on mobile devices in one of the buildings I support works great. All three clerk computers could not access resources via HTTP / TCP/IP wired or wirelessly. In all three cases, no DNS addresses were assigned to the PC.

Here's the solution we have temporarily in place:
1. Use a set of known DNS servers (the Google/Level3/church servers or OpenDNS)
2. Disable the Sophos firewall / enable the Windows firewall

Has anyone else experienced this type of problem?

dnorthut wrote:...Wifi on mobile devices in one of the buildings I support works great. All three clerk computers could not access resources via HTTP / TCP/IP wired or wirelessly. In all three cases, no DNS addresses were assigned to the PC. Has anyone else experienced this type of problem?

Have you tried powering down the firewall and resetting it?

Since the FM group has responsibility for the installation and maintenance of the meetinghouse Internet, I would suggest that they be contacted. The accepted procedure is to contact the Stake PFR (usually a member of the High Council) and they, in turn, will contact the FM group.

What was the problem?

In your dhcp assigned IP Address from the 881W firewall, you are not getting DNS settings?

So your solution was?

Manually add DNS settings?

What does the firewall have to do with your situation? I think more information is needed. Is it only the clerk computers this is affecting? What about other devices that connect to the wireless or wired network? Do they get correct information from DHCP?

If it is only the clerk computers, there may be some commonality there. Are you the STS, if not, contact the STS to troubleshoot the network. Typically the STS is responsible for the network, and not the Stake PFR, or the FM Group who have responsibility for the Hardware, and the ISP relationship. But if the DHCP scopes are messed up, STS will need to contact the GSC.

JohnShaw wrote:What was the problem? In your dhcp assigned IP Address from the 881W firewall, you are not getting DNS settings?

Correct. But only for clerk computers. We tried both wireless and wired connections. We flushed dns cache. We released IP leases. We rebooted.

JohnShaw wrote:So your solution was? Manually add DNS settings?

We had to manually add priamary AND secondary DNS addresses and disable the Sophos Firewall.

JohnShaw wrote:What does the firewall have to do with your situation? I think more information is needed.

Not sure it is the firewall. More likely its Sophos.

JohnShaw wrote:Is it only the clerk computers this is affecting? What about other devices that connect to the wireless or wired network? Do they get correct information from DHCP?
If it is only the clerk computers, there may be some commonality there.

It appears to only be clerk computers -- smart phones and tablets were not affected.

JohnShaw wrote:Are you the STS, if not, contact the STS to troubleshoot the network. Typically the STS is responsible for the network, and not the Stake PFR, or the FM Group who have responsibility for the Hardware, and the ISP relationship. But if the DHCP scopes are messed up, STS will need to contact the GSC.ssv

Yes. I'm the STS for a YSA stake. We are guests in the building. I coordinate anything I need to do with the network with the host stake STS. We're working on this together.

techgy wrote:Have you tried powering down the firewall and resetting it?

Yes. We powered down all network devices.

Since the FM group has responsibility for the installation and maintenance of the meetinghouse Internet, I would suggest that they be contacted. The accepted procedure is to contact the Stake PFR (usually a member of the High Council) and they, in turn, will contact the FM group.

dnorthut wrote:

techgy wrote:Have you tried powering down the firewall and resetting it?

Yes. We powered down all network devices.

Since the FM group has responsibility for the installation and maintenance of the meetinghouse Internet, I would suggest that they be contacted. The accepted procedure is to contact the Stake PFR (usually a member of the High Council) and they, in turn, will contact the FM group.

Typically FM groups have no network knowledge. They may not even know what a DNS is. Most likely they'd forward it to the STS for troubleshooting. But since the report is that this seems to be a Sophos problem, which FM would have nothing to do with.

Hop on over to this topic where you will see that Sophos is blocking DNS queries for another user. A call to the Global Service Center may be in order.