3Com WL-603 - Manual (Page 150)

148 A PPENDIX A: IP A DDRESSING
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.