On Sunday 28 October 2007, Dan Farrell wrote: > On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:19:13 +0000 > > Mick wrote: > > On Saturday 27 October 2007, Dan Farrell wrote: > > > On Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:58:11 +0930 > > > > > > Iain Buchanan wrote: > > > This behaviour is called APIPA (Automatic PRivate IP Addressing) > > > (from /etc/conf.d/net.example): > > > # APIPA is a module that tries to find a free address in the range > > > # Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) > > > # use APIPA to find a free address in the range > > > # 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 > > > > > > It provides DHCP-like functionality without a DHCP server. Pretty > > > useless, unless you use it to configure all your IPs or a route for > > > that subnet. > > > > Even worse, if your DHCP server comes up later, your PC will still > > hold on to APIPA - not sure how this feature can be of any use to be > > honest, but most devices these days from MS Windows to PDAs tend to > > behave like this. Let me correct myself here: my Gentoo boxen behave like this. A WinXP that I tested for this purpose does not. It comes up with the APIPA address and when a router becomes available in the network later on, it readily obtains a dhcp address and drops the APIPA. Any idea how to configure Gentoo to do the same? > I was also wondering what kind of useful purpose this would serve. I > am guessing that it would be enough for a network on one broadcast > domain, if there is no need for any routing information. I am guessing that it is a way of getting two computers talking to each other when they find themselves connected, but without a router? -- Regards, Mick