You turn on your computer and want to connect to the internet but find out playing the dinosaur game every time. That’s when you want to check your IP address and find the address 169.254.XX, which is outside the router’s range, and therefore the PC You cannot see the devices on the network, and you don’t have an Internet connection.
This address is from the APIPA protocol (Automatic Private Internet Addressing), and whose purpose is to assign to your computer an IP address between the range 169.254.0.1 and 169.254.255.254 but only when cant be assigned a DHCP IP address to your computer, that’s when you will find the 169.254 address on your IP.
This protocol acts as a kind of contingency plan to achieve communication with computers that are in the same situation, and every 5 minutes will search if there is a DHCP server in the network which can provide a valid IP address. To try to solve this problem, the following steps can be performed:
- Check the status of the DHCP server
- Verify that you connected your computer correctly and verify the status of the cable
- Check if your Firewall is blocking the communication
- Run the command ipconfig /renew in the Command Prompt as administrator.
- Reinstall your network card drivers.
The steps are straightforward, and in case of not being able to solve the problem, a thorough review must be carried out to locate the fault and restore connectivity.
Remember that if you need more information about this issue, you can contact me using the comments section below.