[Leaplist] Brighthouse cable hook up

[John Simpson]

On 2007-07-23, at 2112, patrick wrote:
> Danny W. Burdick wrote:
>>
>> "Ifconfig" gives you back a valid ip for eth0 ?
>
> Yes, it brings back, (relayed to me tonight, via telephone from  
> Dianna:
>
>> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
>>           inet addr:169.254.119.15  Bcast:169.254.0.0  Mask: 
>> 255.255.0.0

most linux distros will automatically assign a 169.254.x.x address to  
an interface if it can't get an IP address through any other means.

there was a comment about 169.254.x.x being a "microsoft thing". this  
is not the case- usage of 169.254.x.x addresses is defined in RFC  
3330. the only reason it became associated with microsoft is that  
nobody else had really implemented it on any reasonable scale until  
microsoft did- and that's because most non-windoze machines were  
being built as servers and therefore always needed static IP addresses.

the idea behind it is that if there is no DHCP server on a given  
network segment, the driver will choose a 169.254.x.x address at  
random, send out a "ping" to see if anybody else answers for that  
address, and if not, it will start using that address. most people  
had never seen this until it was implemented in windoze, so in many  
peoples' minds this is a windoze thing.

so what this tells me is that there is no DHCP server available to  
give this linux machine an IP address.

is there a router between the cable modem and the computer? if so,  
check the settings on that router to make sure it's running a DHCP  
server. if not, i'm sure you know where to get a copy of ipcop...

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| John M. Simpson    ---   KG4ZOW   ---    Programmer At Large |
| http://www.jms1.net/                         <jms1 at jms1.net> |
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