I have 2 machine inside my home LAN (Netgear WNR2000v2 wifi). One of them is a laptop ("client machine") that will always be assigned random IPs in the 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.50 range. The other is a desktop ("build server") that I wanted to set up with a "dedicated" IP address; at least from within my LAN.
So I configured the router to always bind the build server's MAC address to a specific IP, namely 192.168.1.52. Apparently, this is called "persistent DHCP reservation."
I am having trouble SSHing from the client machine into the build server. I've noticed that unless the build server has made outgoing TCP requests (to the router) within some small frame of time - about 30 or 60 seconds), the router no longer "sees" the build server, and attempting to SSH into it from the client machine produced No route to host
failure messages.
To summarize:
- Let the build server go idle/dormant (no network activity for a few minutes).
- Open a terminal on the client machine:
ssh [email protected]
- This produces
No route to host
errors. - On the build server (an Ubuntu 12.04 deskstop, so not really even a server!), open up a web browser, and go to a few sites (generate network activity)
- Back on client machine:
ssh [email protected]
- Success!
So it's almost as if, after some length of time, a timeout is being reached between the build server and my router, and the router is hanging up. When this happens, and I then try to SSH into the build server, since the router no longer "knows" about it, No route to host
.
Also, if I try to ping the build server when it is idle/dormant, the ping fails. If I try to ping the build server when it is not idle (and thus allows me to SSH into it), it pings just fine. Any ideas?