Comments on: Mac Self Assigned IP Address

By: Philip

Philip — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:05:28 +0000

Success! So far, anyway. I’m sure I’ll be back should it fail again, but in the meantime, thank you!

By: Jesse Williams

Jesse Williams — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:18:27 +0000

David,
Serious problem. I have tried everything you have listed, still nothing. Even worse is that my wife’s MacBook Pro is having no issuse with our router (Apple Airport, Time Capsule). Continue to receive “Airport has the self-assigned IP address 169.254.9.140 and will not be able to ….” Configuration is DHCP, while the version of OS is 10.6.8

Anything you offer would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Jesse

By: WifiHell

WifiHell — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:49:45 +0000

I’ve tried all these “fixes”, and none of them seem to help my Macbook connect through my NetGear WNR2000 when WPA2 security is set. When the network is open or when WEP security is set, there’s no problem.

By: Kent Tunks

Kent Tunks — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:46:37 +0000

I should have said 812.11b and 812.11n. I am a retired audio engineer, not a computer guy
at all!

By: Kent Tunks

Kent Tunks — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:10:46 +0000

Hello everybody,

I had the same problem everyone else did, but with the help of Isaiah at C. Crane the problem was solved. A list of my gear: MacBook Pro model A1211
OS 10.4.11
D-Link DIR 655 Router
C Crane Super USB Wi FI Antenna 3
Wild Blue Satellite Internet service

I was trying to get the USB antenna working and I had the same problems of a 169….. ip adress
that everyone else has been having. I found out that I had been using the wrong password but even
so it showed that the antenna was connected with the dreaded 169 address. When I finally started
using the correct password I could get on the internet sometimes but not every time.I went through
restarting, repluging the antenna , etc. but nothing seemed to work consistently. My router was set to
use only the 812.b standard and I was using WPA2 Personal security with AES Cipher type. I got rid of the WPA2 and set the the router to have no security. To be “open”, in other words. I could connect
every time with the “Open” setting. Next, I set the router to the 812.n standard only and went back to
the same security setting I had before. So far, it has connected every time. I have my fingers crossed! I had tried everything in David’s original post, but nothing worked for me.
I am thinking that perhaps Stef and Crut et. al. have a pretty good theory in their above posts.
Maybe the Mac does not wait long enough for a ip address.I am certainly no computer expert, but it does make sense that it would take some time for a Mac get an address if it had to wait to get through whatever security that was being used to get an address. Also, I would imagine that some transmission standards would be faster than others. Anyhow that is what happened to me.. I would be very interested in what everyone else would have to say about my experience.

By: David Pierron

David Pierron — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:23:24 +0000

@crut – Frustrating … this is how I see it, especially since I bought the same router and had the same problem. Even if you followed my success and bought the same router, you still could have had this problem. There is no way to check the Revision of the firmware when you’re buying a router, is there? =) … I don’t think “Lion” would fix anything, this problem has existed for a long while going back several felines. The only thing I haven’t tried is buying a true Apple product in the Airport base station. I’d assume there would be no problems if you used that device rather than a third party router. But that defeats the purpose of protocols and standards. By the way, I think you meant to say “Static IP” rather than “DHCP with fixed IP” … That “D” is for Dynamic, nothing fixed about it. You may also be referring to running DHCP on the router as well as having a fixed range of IPs available for your static assignments. But the machine’s network interface itself can only run static or DHCP, not both.

By: crut

crut — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:53:34 +0000

Stef & others, in my opinion, have the answer.
I believe the Networking concept of Mac is flawed.
As others have said a PC laptop will function 100% in DHCP mode because it waits indefinitely for the DHCP assigned address, as does my old IBM T23.
Mac OS.XXX doesn’t, it seems to wait only 20 to 30 seconds then self-assigns? Even a ‘Script-Kiddie’ would know better?
There seems no point in designing such a flawed networking mode as this that I can see?
On my wife’s MacBook (10.6.2) I use a fixed IP and WPA2 using a Thompson-Alcatel 585 router. It connects and holds permanently. Using DHCP the problem arises.
On my iMac 27″, i5, (10.6.5) I normally use Ethernet, but when testing WiFi the same problem arises if I use DHCP, so I use DHCP with fixed IP. It then works.
Maybe ‘Lion’ will fix things?

By: stef

stef — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 21:51:06 +0000

I think it’s some sort of timeout. I think the Mac wants a quick answer but the older wireless routers aren’t as fast. Windows will wait forever for an answer so maybe that’s why my laptop works. It does take a while for the network to become active while on a Mac it’s ready almost immediately … So, I’m guessing a timeout and a newer router gives a faster response, and possibly the permission problem aids the Mac in not needing to wait for an answer or something and the Mac gets the connection a little later without issue.

This seems the root of the solution.

By: David Pierron

David Pierron — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 08:50:43 +0000

@mark: Uhm … okay.

Again, my solution was a new router, nothing internal to my MacBook Pro … Also I’ve found that my Belkin Rev 1000 works, but the newer Rev 2000 doesn’t … If I had to do over again, I’d buy an Apple wireless router and avoid all these problems, yes?

By: mark

mark — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 06:30:14 +0000

I believe this is an apple infection from a rogue download of quicktime or something man in the middle or nasty link, hackers trying to not forget about mac afterall, only thing I can figure since I downloaded some qt and didn’t listen to a warning that some people are getting their computers messed with through this plugin, found that warning in firefox site teating my plugins etc.

By: MyMac

MyMac — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 11:20:48 +0000

Greetings, I have been having similar problems in the last 24 hrs. I have a cable modem>netgear wireless router>HP procurve>xp machines. all was working well till I brought the mac no board. It worked fine for about 3 days, then poof. 169 ip. I have wired the mac directly to cable modem, by passing all other hardware. Still only 169. release/renew, nope. My xp machine gets the ip and works fine. the mac? no. Not even when set to static ip from cable modem. says it’s connected but browser won’t open. Not really concerned about wifi as house is hardwired. I did run some updates the other day but not sure if that’s the issue.
mac mini 10.5.8. really like this machine, would hate to turn it into a doorstop.

By: Clayton

Clayton — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 03:13:57 +0000

THANK YOU! …#3 finally solved the problem with my mbp that I’ve had for the past 6 months!
I had come to learn to live with it after trying all other remedies put forth on the internet. Frustration got the better of me yesterday and on the verge of drop-kicking my laptop out of my window I searched again, found your site and finally the self-assigned ip problem is solved.

By: Gabby

Gabby — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 02:19:42 +0000

Thank you soooo much. I have been dealing with this issue for a week. The cable people came and they told me bad information, I called apple, I went to the apple store and they did something complicated and when I brought my computer back home it didn’t work again!!! Then I desperately searched the internet on my Blackberry and came across your site and the first thing I tried about the firewall worked! I was amazed and super relieved..

By: EMILY

EMILY — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:21:06 +0000

# 1 worked for me. Thank you!!!

By: Jerald

Jerald — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:19:45 +0000

Hi David, just wanted to send a quick note that your solution to this worked for me. I started receiving the errors on both my macbooks after having unplugged my cable modem and router for 30 mins or so. Not really knowing what the problem was, I tried the following:

- sequential restart of modem, router, laptop
- connecting directly to the modem – this did not work until I called Comcast and had them flip some switch that had put my modem in standby mode…not sure why they do this
- I then reset my router and tried hooking everything up again – but this just frustrated me more as I was still getting the errors on my laptops
- finally I tried steps 1-3 as you described – still no luck
- Then finally I tossed away my old Netgear Wireless-G for a new Linksys e3000 (great router and setup by the way)

Replacing the router seems to have done the trick. It still seems weird to me that everything would have stopped working right after my 30 min. shutdown (to install a new tv) but thats how it played.

Thanks for gathering all this information in a single place – I’ve looked through so many forums – wish apple would publish some sort of official communication on this.