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Diagnose And Repair SOHO networks: Page 10 of 17

8. Take note of the IP Address. Every PC on the LAN should have the same IP address with the exception of the last number (octet). That last number must be different on each PC.

If your IP address starts with 169.254, then the PC was unable to automatically obtain an IP address; it has instead assigned itself an Automatic Private IP Address (APIPA). If there is no communication with a DHCP server on the network and no static IP address has been assigned, then the PC will assign itself an IP address in the 169.254.x.x range, as shown below. This may be normal or unexpected, depending upon how the network is configured.


PING!

The next diagnostic step is to determine whether each PC can see itself on the network. The PC refers to itself as the "localhost," and the IP address of every localhost is 127.0.0.1.