148 APPENDIX A: IP ADDRESSING
Auto-IP Addressing Network devices use automatic IP addressing if they are configured to 
acquire an address using DHCP but are unable to contact a DHCP server. 
Automatic IP addressing is a scheme where devices allocate themselves 
an IP address at random from the industry standard subnet of 
169.254.x.x (with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0). If two devices allocate 
themselves the same address, the conflict is detected and one of the 
devices allocates itself a new address. 
Automatic IP addressing support was introduced by Microsoft in the 
Windows 98 operating system and is also supported in Windows 2000 
and Windows XP.