HP 4000 Switch - Sonicwall - DHCP issue

[llefebure]

Greetings everyone.

I have a customer's network that is acting strange. They have 3 HP 4000 switches connected with fiber. The connection between 2 of them has 2 pair of fiber trunked together. The main switch has a Sonicwall SOHO3 connected to it that goes to the Internet via a T1. This sonicwall has an IP of 10.10.10.1 with a mask of 255.255.0.0. The sonicwall is also doing DHCP. This is where my issues arises. It is fine with routing packets to the Internet, but is slow with DHCP.

The DHCP is enabled, but incredibly slow if it even works at all. I have been testing with a Windows 2000 computer. SOmetimes I can renew the address and it will timeout after a minute, other times it will wait 5 seconds and get an address. Sometimes it is 30 to 40 seconds. Seems pretty random.

If I do DHCP on a Windows 2000 server, the addresses can be renewed immediately. That works great as a workaround.

I have disabled 1 pair of fiber and the trunking between the 2 switches that were trunked. I have tried Spanning tree off and on, with the mode in normal and fast. I can't see a difference. The firmware on the switches is up to date.

Have any of you seen this before? Any ideas where to continue troubleshooting?

Thanks,
Lance

 

[eod]

Hmm.. Use the DHCP on the win2k server? Sorry, I'm not impressed with the Sonicwall much. I have a similar setup with a Sonicwall SOHO2 and HP switch but I use Windows DHCP without a hitch.

Does the leasing on the first switch seem any different from trying to lease on the second switch?

 

[llefebure]

Leasing seems to be the same reguardless of which switch a client is on.

We resolved the the issue by putting a DHCP server on a Novell server that is in-house.

The strange part of this is that I have other clients with Sonicwalls doing DHCP to a network of HP switches. Every other client is fine.

-Lance