[skalie]

Howdy, recently I managed to configure a wireless router to get my iBook on the web.

Everything was dandy untill I started getting a 169.*.*.* IP address, as opposed to athe 192.168.1.* address I normally received from the inbuilt DHCP server. No more web.

Confusion.

Turns out that the default network name "wireless" was attracting this unwanted IP address. Changing the name of the network to "wwwireless" on the iBook and the router solved the prolem.

Doing a whois on the 169.* IP turned up www.ripe.net which is Regional Internet Registry.

My question, was I getting that IP from the router, or from some other source?

edit: just found that 169.*.*.* IP addresses are on the reserved list since, er, 2001.

[John Strung]

The 169.x.x.x address is a bogus address that any PC or Mac will show if it cannot obtain an address by DCHP. This is a "self-assigned" address.

[tooki]

Presumably someone near you had another base station with the SSID "wireless" (the default on many devices) and no password, but without a DHCP server -- in other words, you might have been logging into someone else's network by accident (thanks to the "roaming" feature in WiFi).

Changing your network name (SSID) to something unique made sure you were logging into your own network, thus fixing the problem.

Moral of the story: ALWAYS give your base station a new, unique network name.

tooki