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Synergy client keeps searching bad or old IP addresses for my Server (which is a laptop, with DHCP gets new IP regularly). Also my laptop has a couple "bad" ipaddress which are visible to other PC's when nslookup is done.

So the Synergy client just keeps trying to use these bad or old IP addresses and getting failed to connect to server errors. Eventually after 10 minutes or 30 or something after I give up and dig out another keyboard, the client will eventually get around to the good IP and will connect.

I think the Server application causing these "bad IP's" might be at fault here too (VMware)... it puts the virtual network IP's into WinXP's network connections which I think allows other PC's like my client see 192.168.XXX.1 which are meaningless to other computers.

Anyway.... can I make Synergy change its retry strategy??? Rather than retrying server IP address #1 for 100 times, then IP address #2 100 times, then etc.... I'd rather that it try IP #1 once, then try IP #2 once, then IP #3 once, then do the equivalent of nslookup for the server to see if it is visible with a new IP, then cycle through the list again.

Thanks!

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As far as I'm aware Synergy uses DNS to find the IP address of the hostname you specify. Under Windows this also uses WINS. I'm not sure whether Synergy performs the lookup once and caches the IP or whether it performs the lookup on each connect attempt, but either way this sounds like a problem with your network set up rather than Synergy.

Presumably if you ping the same hostname you gave to Synergy you will have the same problem.

Can you configure your DHCP server to always give the Synergy server the same IP address? This would be by far the most reliable solution - there's a reason why servers don't use DHCP to get their addresses :-)

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I can't change DHCP server, this is at work. I didn't try ping, but nslookup definitely shows the computer is reporting 3 IP addresses. Just seems like it would be nice to configure Synergy's strategy. Oncew it locks on to the good IP, it should remember that for a while and revert back to that rather than retrying potentially "bad" ones for minutes/hours. – Kevin0000 Apr 18 '11 at 14:04
@Kevin0000: This is the way DNS is supposed to work. You can supply multiple IPs for load balancing, and programs are meant to try them all. The problem is that your DNS server is reporting invalid entries, so the problem is outside of Synergy (because any program you use will have the same problem. The code in question is part of the OS, not Synergy.) Perhaps, if your PCs are on the same LAN, you can assign a static IP from a subnet that is not used by your organisation? Your router should ignore it, but your PCs may still be able to talk. Or you could try asking for a static IP. – Malvineous Apr 19 '11 at 3:03

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