On Thursday 19 August 2004 08:48 am, Danny Sauer wrote:
169.254.0.0/255.255.0.0 is the netblock used by autoconfigured DHCP machines. If you've ever taken a windows box and turned it on without a DHCP server anywhere, it will autoconfigure itself to use an address from that range. It'll then send out a broadcast to see fi anyone else replies on that address, and pick another from that range if the one it chose was taken. And so on. That way, you could have a hub, some wires, and no knowledge of how to configure a network, but still get a couple of home machines to talk to each other. Most DHCP clients now will use that so they can interoperate nicely.
--Danny
I understand your answer, although I'm not real certain why things are done that way. I have a Dell 1150 laptop with XP & SuSE9.1 on it and it has a real problem getting an IP from my Belkin wireless router when running XP. It usually picks up the blackhole IP and will not get a useable IP. But then sometimes after a restart it will pick up the correct IP and work fine until the next boot. Linux on the same laptop gets the correct IP every time. For me that's enough of an excuse to delete XP now. On the other hand, I have a friend with an HP laptop using XP and an ethernet connection going into a linksys router/hub and that machine has the same problem but it will hook up properly about 80% of the time. It will work 100% if I plug it into my linux router, indicating some kind of router problem, maybe. Is there a reliable way to insure the client gets the proper IP. Or is there a way to force the client to get the IP? I realize this is really a windows question but I ask it here since 99% of my time is spent using SuSE and I would like to know why Linux is so much easier to connect to a DHCP server. Richard