A link-local address is an Internet Protocol address that is intended only for communications within the segment of a local network (a link) or a point-to-point connection that a host is connected to. Link-local addresses allow addressing hosts without using a globally-routable address prefix that must be obtained from a local or regional Internet registry. Routers do not forward packets with link-local addresses.

Link-local addresses are used in stateless address autoconfiguration procedures for Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) and IPv6 to assign IP addresses to network interfaces when no external, stateful mechanism of address configuration exists, such as the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or another primary configuration method has failed. In IPv6, link-local addresses are always assigned, automatically or by configuration, and are required for the internal functioning of various protocol components.

Link-local addresses for IPv4 are defined in the address block 169.254.0.0/16. In IPv6, they are allocated with the fe80::/10 prefix.

Contents

• 1 IPv4
• 2 IPv6
• 3 See also
• 4 Notes
• 5 References