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Difficulty: EasyIP Addressing and Network Configuration

An office worker reports losing connectivity to shared network drives after hot-docking their laptop at a workstation. A technician checks the current network configuration on the client laptop and views the following parameters:

IPv4 Address: 169.254.195.12
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway: None

Which of the following best explains why this workstation cannot access local network resources?

  1. The laptop failed to communicate with a DHCP server and automatically assigned itself an Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) address.Answer
  2. B
    The primary DNS server is unreachable and failed to issue an IP address lease to the client network adapter.
  3. C
    An unmanaged Layer 2 network switch stripped the default gateway information from the client configuration.
  4. D
    The system firewall blocked HTTP port 80, causing the interface to revert to a secure fallback port mode.

Answer

The workstation failed to reach a DHCP server and automatically assigned itself an APIPA address.
The IP address 169.254.195.12 belongs to the IPv4 Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) block (169.254.0.0/16). Operating systems assign an APIPA address when a interface configured for dynamic DHCP cannot contact or receive a response from a DHCP server.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Examine the assigned IPv4 address.
The address 169.254.195.12 falls into the APIPA range (169.254.0.0/16).
Operating systems like Windows automatically generate an APIPA address when dynamic IP configuration is enabled but no DHCP server responds.
2
Identify the cause of APIPA assignment.
The system cannot contact a DHCP server on the local network segment.
APIPA allows local link-local communication but lacks a default gateway, preventing routing beyond the local broadcast domain.

Key Concept

APIPA Autoconfiguration
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Topics

IP Addressing and Network Configuration

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