[KLUG Members] Why this routing, anyone?

[Adam Williams]

>I've noticed this line in recent (RH9) routing tables:
>169.254.0.0     *               255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth0
>I have deleted it without ill-effect, and found some reference to it....
>Can someone tell us what purpose this routing has?

Do you have an interface in the 169.x.x.x subnet?  If not did you possibly 
attempt to bring up a dhcp interface minus the dhcp server?

169.254.x.x is "auto-self-configuration".  A dynamic interface will assign 
itself an address on this subnet if via-remote configuration fails.  This 
is new behaviour - see it also in Win2000/XP and I'm told in OS/X.  This 
lets real honest to goodness idiots create a small IP network with no 
configuration.  There is an RFC somewhere, but I don't recall the number.

You can just ignore this subnet/route,  it should never have any effect 
on a "real" IP network.