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We have an embedded networking device product which we first develop and test on Windows platform. It was observed that based on given conditions the device got a Link Local address - 169.254.106.235.

But when I try to ping the above IP from command prompt it says 'Dest. Unreachable' or error. Now if I setup a loopback adapter with obtain configuration automatically - I see that the adapter has obtained IP 169.254.233.20

Now when I ping both my device and loopback adapter IP I start getting response from both - but then again when I delete or set up the IP manually for loopback adapter - the device becomes unreachable

How can we be able to ping my device in first condition - no loopback adapter setup?

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As pointed out in your question Link Local Addressing - Communication with Routable Addresses there is no way to perform routing into the link-local address space.

This means the interface involved in the communication with your embedded device needs a link-local address as well. In case you do not feel well about using loopback interfaces, you can set your windows machine to DHCP on the physical interface pointing towards the embedded device. As there seems to be no DHCP server, windows will assign a link-local IP address.

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  • RFC3927 does allow hosts with routable addresses to communicate with hosts with link local addresses, this is described in section 2.6.2. But it isn't clear to me whether Windows can be configured to do this. Jun 27, 2018 at 9:50
  • @HarryJohnston you are absolutely right. The trick might be given as well In many network stacks, achieving this functionality may be as simple as adding a routing table entry indicating that 169.254/16 is directly reachable on the local link.
    – Kevin K.
    Jun 27, 2018 at 11:44
  • I'm pretty sure this is configurable, but I have no idea how. :-) Via netsh, perhaps, or Powershell cmdlets. I guess there's documentation somewhere. Jun 27, 2018 at 21:28

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