Hi. Recently, my firewall popped up and told me that this IP addy had been added to my network. Research shows it's a company in Marina Del Ray, CA. Definitely NOT my IP addy. Does anyone know why this showed up, or who it is? Thanks!

What "research" did you do to falsely determine that it's a company in Marina Del Ray, CA? The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 for Automatic Private IP Addressing. As a result, APIPA provides an address that is guaranteed not to conflict with routable addresses.

Marina Del Ray, CA is actually the postal address of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. http://private.dnsstuff.com/tools/w... You have probably picked up that IP address because a computer on your network cannot access the DHCP server and Windows has allocated this number. Stuart

Hi everyone, Thanks for the replies. To the first one, I simply researched it using a trace program for IP addresses. When you say that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved 169.254.0.0-169.254.255.255 for Automatic Private IP Addressing. As a result, APIPA provides an address that is guaranteed not to conflict with routable addresses, what does that mean? I'm pretty new to IP info, so forgive me for seeming naive... I certainly apologize. To the second person, You mentioned that I probably picked up the IP address because a computer on my network can't access the DHCP server and Windows has allocated this number. The only system I have on my network is mine- no others. Why would Windows allocate that number? Thanks so much!

Do you have internet connectivity on the machine that's showing the 169 ip? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

If you link down the list on that link I posted you will see next to Comment: "Please see RFC 3330 for additional information" RFC stand for Request for Comment. In effect all RFCs combined are the Internet bible. Nothing happens on the Internet without an RFC detailing it. If you put RFC 3330 into Google and read some of the articles they will tell you everything you will ever need to know about IP addresses. Stuart

The unpredicted and unwelcome appearance of the 169.254.xxx.xxx IP address, together with loss of internet connectivity, often indicates something I see often called "corruption of Winsock" and the "IP stack" - whatever those things are. At least I know you will be unable to connect to the internet, or even your ADSL modem or local network router until you get the problem fixed. To do that Google things like [repair Winsock] or [reinstall Winsock] Look here for more: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/isolut... Since the 169.254.xxx.xxx addresses are also assigned when DHCP servers are unavailable and the TCP/IP is set to get IP addresses from DHCP, then the assignment of this address type can indicate connectivity problems, rather than Winsock and TCP/IP stack problems. Before messing with those things, better to try to make absolutely sure that you have physical level connectivity with the device which is supposed to provide the DHCP addresses. (A missing light on the modem, or some other test which indicates that the modem is not connected to your ISP might be a clue.)