Has Intel reserved IP address 192.168.254.1 or subnet 192.168.254?

[HStat]

Ever since home Wi-fi was available, my home router IP has been set to 192.168.254.1. Recently I purchased a Netgear C6300 cable modem/ router, and when I tried to assign it that address, the GUI said it was invalid. Tech support at Netgear is claiming that Intel has reserved that IP address for communication with the ATOM processor.

They do not offer any documentation, just a 2nd tier engineer being told verbally by an escalation engineer. In my 20+ years supporting/testing network devices I have never heard of a CPU using an IP address, or a reserved subnet other than the standard class A, B, C and multicast groups.

To add to my suspicion that Netgear support is off-base here is the fact that the C6300 will accept 192.168.255.1 which I know is an illegal address.

If Intel has reserved 254, could someone please point me to documentation? If not, it would be nice to have something from Intel which I can show to Netgear so they can file a bug.

Thanks

Howard

[ASouz7]

Hello hstateman,

It seems unlikely, this is a fairly common IP for routers/gateways. We will check with our networking engineers and will let you know.

Have tried to use another range to see what happens?

[HStat]

Thanks for the quick reply. The Netgear C6300 accepted all addresses in the range of 192.168.0-253.1 and also accepted the illegal address of 192.168.255.1. I'm fairly certain because of this it is a bug in the router, but Netgear support is insisting it is "by design" due to Intel reserving 254 for the ATOM. In my 25 years of networking I have never heard of a CPU using an IP address, but then again, with the shift to V6 one never knows. Bottom line is if 254 is reserved for something, I can close the support case with Netgear. If it is not, I need documentation so they can file a bug

Cheers.

Howard