What does "blank" in Default Gateway mean?

Question

I have reinstalled Windows XP and posted about not being able to connect to the internet. I did go and ensure all drivers are there.

Now, when I type ipconfig /all, I get

• a physical address
• DHCP enabled
• autoconfiguration enabled
• autoconfiguration IP address
• subnet mask
• a line that says default gateway
  where default gateway is the only line with no numbers or anything next to it.

My wireless connection works, but how can I get this ethernet connection to work? This was working prior to this fresh reinstall.

Answer 1

Your key here is that you're seeing an autoconfiguration IP address (which likely is in the 169.254.x.x range) instead of a regular IP address. This means that your computer is either not receiving or not detecting a reply from a DHCP server and is assigning itself an APIPA address. If you're plugging your laptop directly into the cable modem then you should either be getting a private-range IP address or a public-range IP address, depending on which your cable company assigns to the client machines. If you have plugged a different laptop into this modem and it is able to properly connect to the internet then you may have a bad NIC on your current laptop or the NIC's drivers may not be loaded properly. Try uninstalling and reinstalling your NIC's drivers and see if the problem persists.

Answer 2

Your gateway is the address your computer expects to route your traffic through in order to get to any address that is not on your immediate subnet. If there is no address under default gateway, then your traffic isn't leaving your subnet.

The most likely problem is that either your router is incorrectly configured, or you're not using DHCP and forgot to put in the default gateway when you keyed in your ip information.

I could tell you more, with more information.