How a DHCP assigned IP address on a printer almost got me fired!

I graduated with diploma in computer science engineering from the Government Ambikapur Polytechnic college in 2014 after what could be referred to as an arduous period in my life. Everything happened too fast – lectures started and ended in a blink, academic sessions commenced and ended in a flash, and with every session, came its school charges. Balancing the academic work with the menial job I did on the side to raise money for school charges was not easy. In all, I made it through and left school with good grades.

In March 2015, I got an employment in the city of Bangalore as an IT officer with one of the biggest retail chains in Indian with over one hundred branch offices. I was responsible for the smooth and seamless operations of all IT infrastructures in four of our branches, nationwide. The four branches under my control are connected in a full mesh topology using Fiber optic as primary and Microwave as backup. The central office in the city connects the other three to the headquarter in Mumbai via an MPLS connection.

The job, as challenging as it appeared at the beginning, started on a good note with me applying what I learnt in school and during my training as a network technician while searching for a job. Everyday, I would shuttle round the city, going from one branch to another, attending to users’ complaints and resolving issues with connectivity, printers, scanners, replacing damaged network components, updating routers’ configurations, setting up access points, monitoring the network and so on. I loved my job because it kept me busy, helped pay the bills, and exposed me to tools I needed to practice in order to get better. I was finally able to take care of myself, my siblings and my aged parents. I was happy, committed and undoubtedly dedicated.

They say big things come in little packages and the little things we neglect today may become the big things of tomorrow. I learned this the hard way when on the  30th of August, 2016, the HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 All-in-One printer in the central office became unreachable. The printer was on and showed no signs of technical faults. It came up at the touch of the power button and went off at the touch of same. Only problem was that users could not print from their systems. Unfortunately for me, this incident coincided with the IT manager’s scheduled visit to the central office that day. After about 45 minutes of troubleshooting, it was discovered that the dhcp-assigned IP on the printer had changed. The IT manager was furious that such basic thing was not known to me and ordered for my immediate replacement. My offence, I allowed a dhcp-assigned IP on the printer. When a dhcp server assigns IP addresses to network hosts, the addresses are on lease and are subject to change. Servers and printers should NEVER be assigned dynamic addresses if you do not want to run into problems. If you do and the dhcp server changes the address dynamically, the printers and servers will become unreachable, and you might find yourself in my shoes.