Switches are supposed to be DHCP servers.....right?

[ArcticFox]

Several months ago I bought a 3Com OfficeConnect 8 Plus switch. It's a basic 10/100 job, nothing fancy. Anyways, most of it's life has been as a LAN party switch with an external DHCP server - either a router has been wired to it or ICS is enabled on someone's PC with a modem and everyone pulls from that computer.

So anyways, one day I try to connect to my NAS box from my desktop with nothing connected to the switch to serve IP's. It forks up a 169.254 number, which seemed familiar although according to my Network+ instructor that shouldn't be right since Windows dishes that out when APIPA kicks in.

However, it took a couple minutes to get that address which made me wonder - normally it's pretty quick. NAS drive took forever to boot up, also strange.

I try to access the share on the network drive and it times out. Unplugging and plugging the switch back in did nothing, tried that multiple times.

At this point I plug a router into it, renew the IP's on both the NAS and the PC and everything starts working again. Kinda ticked off at this point.

I RMA'd the switch through 3Com, they sent a replacement.....does the same thing. It's a newer model then I had, heavier and has an alert light on it that I don't know what it does (only comes on for a second when plugged in).

Now I'm stumped. Do these things not have built-in DHCP servers or something? Has it gotten so used to not dishing out IP's that it forgot how to do it?

I gotta send my old one back to 3Com but I think I just wasted my time. I've tried two network cards, reformatted my PC, cycled it a dozen times, nothing seems to make sense anymore.

[Whir]

Switches have no such mechanisms. They simply learn IPs and forward packets. That's all they do. You still need either a router, or static IPs on your network.

[GroundZero3]

yup you need to have a router that does dhcp (those little linksys/dlink ones) or build a server that does DHCP

Not to get anal Whir but switches learn Mac addresses and build a table around what it finds since its a layer 2 device

[ArcticFox]

Wow....that toally screwed me up.

I feel really stupid now.

[washe]

Just get a cheap router you only need the dhcp function of it.. wont be a big issue..

Take it easy We dont know everything!!