You might need to change your network s IP address scheme for any number of reasons: company acquisitions, conflicts

with another network, additional IP addresses r equired. I recently changed a client s IP address scheme from 192.168.10.0/24 to 10. 10.0.0/16 because the client needed more than 254 addresses at a particular loca tion. If you ve ever had to change an IP addressing scheme on a network of any signi ficant size, you know that it's a major undertaking. If you need to perform such a change, plan it over a weekend to give yourself plenty of time to test and tr oubleshoot any problems that might arise. Here are some items to consider when c hanging your network's addressing scheme. * WAN/VPN connections. Reconfigure the firewall, WAN routers and VPN tunnels with the new IP scheme. For site-to-site VPN tunnels, remember to update the re mote firewalls with the new IP scheme. You might want to temporarily enable secu re WAN management access to any remote firewall in case you have difficulty esta blishing the tunnel after you change the IP scheme on the local firewall. * Servers. Change the IP addresses, subnets, default gateways, and DNS addre sses on the servers, to reflect the new IP address scheme. I suggest you use a l abel maker to label any device that has a fixed IP address. Double-check the C:\ windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\lmhosts f iles for server IP addresses and update them as necessary. After you ve changed the IP addresses of all your servers, run the commands ipconfig /flushdns and ipconfig /registerdns to flush the DNS cache and load the new IP addresses of the servers. * Sites and services. Use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Active Dire ctory Sites and Services to create a new subnet and assign the updated subnet to the site. Make sure to remove the old IP subnet from the site. * Microsoft IIS. If you re running IIS, make sure to check the IP addresses of y our Web sites. Open Internet Services Manager (ISM), right-click your Web site, and select Properties. On the Web Site tab, the IP address should be set to "All unassigned." If you manually selected an IP address for the server, you need to update it after you change the IP address on the Web server. * Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. If you run Exchange, start Exchange System Manager (ESM) and select Administrative Groups, , Servers, , Protocols, SMTP. R ight-click the Default SMTP Virtual Server and select Properties. On the General tab, make sure the IP address is set to "All unassigned." If it's not, make sur e to update the SMTP Virtual Server with the correct IP address after you make t he IP address change on the server. * DNS. Most likely, you had to change the IP address of your DNS server. If you allow zone transfers to other Win2K and later DNS servers listed on the Name Servers tab in the Properties of your Win2K domain, you must update the IP addr esses of any DNS servers. * Devices with fixed IP addresses. Change the IP address for any devices tha t have fixed IP addresses, such as printers, switches, routers, network scanners , network copiers, and video-conference units. Make sure that the remote video-c onference units are updated with the new address of the local video-conference u nit. If your workstations print directly to a network printer with a fixed IP ad dress, you must update the printer address on each workstation or write a script that will update the workstations automatically. You can also set the workstati ons to print via a queue on a server, in which case you just have to change the printer address on the server. * Firewall. This change is probably one of the more difficult ones. Make sur e to get a good backup of your firewall configuration before you start. Dependin g on your firewall configuration, you might need to change the IP address of you r inside interface, the IP address of internal network objects, static routes, a

nd one-to-one NAT definitions with the new IP address of the device. * DHCP configuration. Most likely your workstations are assigned an IP addre ss with a DHCP server. Before you make the address change, I suggest you expire all the leases on the DHCP server to force the workstations to obtain a new IP a ddress. Make sure to update the configuration of the DHCP server with the new IP scheme, which typically includes the new IP address, subnet, default gateway, a nd DNS servers. * Test, test, test. Thoroughly test your new configuration. At a minimum, te st the following items: