Detect IP Conflicts on Network

Question

I have a Wireless WAN network that I am managing devices on. We recently had an IP conflict that took us over 10 months to find (we had no idea there was even a conflict until we were pinging a device and pulled the plug and it kept pinging). Are there any utility programs made for Windows that can scan an entire network's arp packets and just make sure there are no IP conflicts, for ALL nodes on the network? (I know you can arp/ping/check on windows for individual machines)

• DHCP cannot be set, this is a wireless communications network
• The devices must have statically assigned IP addresses, regardless, but even if DHCP was enabled, the device would have to respect it, so I still need to detect for conflicts as the device(s) may or may not be set to respect DHCP.
• I do not have direct control over all of these devices at any given time. Many of them are literally under guard & locked buzzer. Some are even 200ft up in the air.

Solution

You want something like arpwatch. I have only used it on Linux, but there are some Windows clones available. I have no personal experience with them though.

Comments

[MaQleod]

InfoBlox has some software (such as ipam express) that does network scanning and will be able to detect conflicts. It isn't specifically for windows though, but you can run it in vmware player on windows (it is a virtual machine).

[mveroone]

You could script something to arp-probe the whole network and see if you get multiple answers to the same request.

[Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007]

While I agree with the premise of your answer, DHCP doesn't help when someone else hard-sets their IP and then hooks into the network.

[TheFrack]

Yes, this is precisely the problem. I have multiple companies being dummies and hard-setting IPs on a network and that's what caused the issue in the first place. I don't control the environments.

[MaQleod]

You have multiple companies all plugging into the same network? At the very least I'd want to separate out each company on their own subnet or vlan. What level of control do you have over the backbone of the network?

[TheFrack]

Thanks man, you led me to this: binaryplant.com I still need something that can actually detect a random network conflict though. I haven't managed to find anything! :(

[TheFrack]

Nevermind, that does the trick. It tells you if the MAC changes! w00t!