Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA)

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Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) was developed by Microsoft as a means for clients that could not contact a DHCP server to communicate on the local network anyway.

• if Windows host does not receive a response from a DHCP server within given time frame,
  • it selects an address from the range 169.254.1.1-169.254.254.254
  • this addressing is referred to as link local in standards documentation (RFC 3927)
• has no mechanism for assigning default gateway or DNS servers
• hosts using APIPA are restricted to communicated on the local network

Info

These addresses are from one of the address ranges reserved for private addressing (169.254.0.0/16)

• first and last subnets are supposed to be unused