Networking – What is a Link-Local Address?

ipip addresslink-localnetworking

I could find some information on the Internet but it is hard for me to understand this information because of the use of technical words. Could somebody please help me with that.

Did I correctly understand what I read?

Firstly, is a link-local address always an IP address?
Moreover, is the link-local address always in the range from 169.254.1.0 to 169.254.1.0?

Secondly, the link-local address is always assigned to a device by itself. In more detail, the device chooses an IP address (from a specified range) and sends this IP address to other devices in the network. If this IP address is not occupied by other devices, it will be taken by the considered device. Is this right?

Best Answer

Link local addresses allow machines to automatically have an IP address on a network if they haven't been manually configured or automatically configured by a special server on the network (DHCP). Before an address is chosen from that range, the machine sends out a special message (using ARP which stands for address resolution protocol) to the machines on the network around it (assuming that they also haven't been assigned an address manually or automatically) to find out if 169.254.1.1 is free. If it is, then the machine assigns that address to its network card. If that address is already in use by another machine on the same network, then it tries the next IP 169.254.1.2 and so on, until it finds a free address.