IP address equal gateway??

In my understanding of things this could work on a single workstation if it were acting as a router for a network. If a second PC on the network were configured like this it would put up an error message on BOTH workstations and TCP/IP would be disabled on the second.

If the computers were all on a network and running both the IP and IPX protocols you would have people signing in, getting the error, click OK to ignore it and logging on. If there was no need for TCP/IP then this would be little more than a bother and people would get used to it.

So the answer is likely that your client hasn't a clue how to setup TCP/IP and doesn't use it anyway.

Enjoy your interesting puzzle ... it looks like an opportunity!

Is this machine using Internet Connection Sharing? These IP addresses look suspiciously like the ones Microsoft uses for ICS. If ICS is being used and this machine is the ICS server, then these settings might be correct. You don't say which OS is being used. Hell, you didn't even say whether or not you were having a problem with the machine. 192.x.x.x is a class C address and 255.255.0.0 is a class B subnet mask.

Just for the record, this would be incorrect even for ICS. It's a boo-boo.

The gateway address is the address of last resort. If a requested address in not on the local subnet, it is routed via this address to another subnet or to the outside world. What this setup is telling the machine is that if an IP address is not on the subnet, just send the packet to yourself.

On a single segment LAN, this is a harmless sitatuation but in a routed environment, this will result in not being able to communicate beyond the local subnet.

paul

You should never have the same IP address for your gateway and IP address. If the machine was acting as a router then it would have at least a second NIC card and the route table on the PC would handle everything. In simple terms what the gateway setting does is provide the adddress to send all packets not bound for the local network. What does your clients environment look like? NT? Internet Connection? Protocols used?

The succinct answer to "why?" is: ignorance.

Adding to the prior answers, however, 192.168.x.x is a reserved for local addresses. This will *never* leave the local subnet. The gateway address in such cases is probably immaterial.

This would be problematic if "the IP address of the workstation_s_" is not a typo and all (more than one, anyway) ws's are using 192.168.0.10. More than one machine would respond, with unpredictable results.

So, I suspect that TCP/IP is not the first protocol in the list of bindings, and depending on the OS and network things appear to work OK because they're using NetBEUI or IPX before having to try IP.

Those settings are default for a dial-up adapter that is set up for DHCP but cannot reach the DHCP server for an IP address. The unroutable address default is used to prevent the machine from broadcasting and possibly storming the collision domain with requests.

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