You work as an IT Consultant for a small business. The business uses several Windows based servers to store data used between company employees. After a power outage and UPS failure, one of the servers has rebooted and users are unable to communicate with the server. After running the IPCONFIG command line tool, you find the server has an IP Address of 169.254.20.1. Which of the following is likely the issue?
Answer Description
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) provides network devices with IP configurations. When a Windows based PC or Server does not have a statically assigned IP and cannot connect to a DHCP server it will assign an Automatic Private IP Address (APIPA) and attempt to use it to communicate on the network. The APIPA address range is 169.254.0.0 to 169.254.255.255.
Wikipedia
The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a network management protocol used on UDP/IP networks whereby a DHCP server dynamically assigns an IP address and other network configuration parameters to each device on a network so they can communicate with other IP networks. A DHCP server enables computers to request IP addresses and networking parameters automatically from the Internet service provider (ISP), reducing the need for a network administrator or a user to manually assign …
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia