AUTOMATIC PRIVATE IP ADDRESS-strange Hello experts, My cable net CAT5 wire ws cut down due to some renovation activity of the old building tht i am living in. For a few days, i had unplugged the cable from my comp ; . After a few days, when i plugged back the cable, my system started configuring itself to arbitrary IP ranges (local IP since i cant connect to internet thru it); I used to check my IP addresses regularly; In 'Show all connections' i checked for the type of IP address it showed---->>>> AUTOMATIC PRIVATE IP ADDRESS. I searched on the net to find following--> (Note that my system is WinXP and i hv assumed tht thngs for 2000 shud work for XP too) { You use Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) to automate TCP/IP address configuration for single-subnet networks that do not contain a DHCP server. By default, a computer running Windows 2000 first tries to contact a DHCP server on the network to dynamically obtain configuration for each installed network connection. # If a DHCP server is reached and the leased configuration is successful, TCP/IP configuration is completed. # If a DHCP server is not reached, the computer instead uses APIPA to automatically configure TCP/IP. When you use APIPA, Windows 2000 determines an address in the reserved IP address range from 169.254.0.1 through 169.254.255.254. This address is used as a temporary IP address configuration until a DHCP server is located. The subnet mask is set to 255.255.0.0. The APIPA range of IP addresses is reserved by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Any IP addresses within this range are not used on the Internet. } I often get an IP address from this range and with it I am able to access files on LAN by windows NETBIOS ie-windows file sharing; However the IP address sometimes is not in this range, but it is arbitrarily from my LAN itself, and sometimes a Connection to ISP s/w on that comp automatically comes in my NETWORK CONNECTIONS list under INTERNET GATEWAY, whose settings i can edit , etc. Why is the IP address not always in the above mentioned range.? Is it some accidental assignment done by the router? Also I wud like to learn more abt APIPA. thanks in advance amogh

If you get the IANA address it means you can't get a dhcp address. This translates to either bad cable/network connection to the dhcp server or a problem with the dhcp server. Sounds like your cable is not fixed correctly. Call your cable company

ya the cable is yet to be fixed and will be fixed next week; but the doubt tht i mentioned is that how am i able to share files and folders? on LAN and tht the IP address is not always in the APIPA range. thx amogh

NETBIOS does not need to use IP addresses although NETBIOS can use TCPIP packets.