Following an unexpected power restoration at a regional site, several client workstations in the finance department report loss of access to shared network drives and local intranet resources. Running network diagnostic commands on one affected workstation reveals an IPv4 configuration of with a subnet mask of and no assigned default gateway. Service status logs on the centralized infrastructure host reveal that the background service assigned to listen on UDP ports 67 and 68 failed to initialize during system startup. Which network host server role failed to start, and what mechanism explains the client workstations' current IPv4 address assignment?
- The DHCP server role failed to initialize, causing client operating systems to automatically generate an Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) link-local address when no IP lease response was received.Answer
- BThe DNS server role failed to initialize, causing client operating systems to default to an APIPA address because domain name resolution timed out during network adapter initialization.
- CThe DHCP server role failed because inbound traffic was blocked on TCP port 53 rather than UDP port 67, forcing the workstation OS to request a link-local lease from an external default gateway.
- DThe Syslog server role failed to initialize, which prevented the default gateway from broadcasting network routes and resulted in the router assigning an APIPA fallback configuration to clients.
Answer
The DHCP server role failed to initialize, causing client operating systems to self-assign an APIPA link-local address in the 169.254.0.0/16 range after failing to obtain a dynamic IP lease.
The correct response identifies that the DHCP server role uses UDP ports 67 and 68 to distribute IP configuration data to clients. When the DHCP daemon fails to start, client operating systems auto-configure a link-local APIPA address in the range to allow local subnet communication.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
DHCP Server Role and APIPA Functionality