[Leaplist] Brighthouse cable hook up

[Hank Lambert]

That's interesting about RFC 3330. Being I support Micro$oft computers, most
of my official training is in Micro$oft. Needless to say, in my classes,
Micro$oft has no problem declaring that that address range is reserved for
them. I also didn't know that Linux also provides an address from that range
if it cannot get an address. Always fun learning the truth.

-----Original Message-----
From: leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org [mailto:leaplist-bounces at leap-cf.org] On
Behalf Of John Simpson
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2007 2:00 PM
To: This is the Leap Main List
Subject: Re: [Leaplist] Brighthouse cable hook up

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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