User's Manual

106 APPENDIX B: IP ADDRESSING
Auto-IP Addressing Network devices use automatic IP addressing if they are configured to
acquire an address using DHCP but are unable to contact a DHCP
server. Automatic IP addressing is a scheme where devices allocate
themselves an IP address at random from the industry standard subnet
of 169.254.x.x (with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0). If two devices
allocate themselves the same address, the conflict is detected and one
of the devices allocates itself a new address.
Automatic IP addressing support was introduced by Microsoft in the
Windows 98 operating system and is also supported in Windows 2000.