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I am posting here because I randomly installed Wireshark and I found that for 2 minutes or so (later it stopped) my computer started making ARP requests to IP addresses outside my local network, and worst of it to USA goverment offices (when I looked up 2 IPs, they were IANA).

Is this normal, or its something bad inside my PC?

Thank You What is happening?

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    IANA is the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority; special-purpose IPs will be assigned to them, it doesn't mean those IPs belong to their computers.
    – user20574
    Commented Jun 25, 2017 at 3:58

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169.254.0.0/16 is reserved for link-local addresses as per RFC 3927. Link-local address space is used when there is no authority for IP address control (DHCP or static configuration). Some device with IP address 192.168.0.105 is trying to find out whether various link-local addresses are in use.

IANA is the authority issuing IP address allocations, so the reserved link-local space is still registered there.

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  • Oh thank you, then it makes sense that the first ARP requests where made to this addresses until the computer started to only make the ARP requests to the router/gateway.
    – Jokin
    Commented Jun 24, 2017 at 17:28
  • Please don't forget to mark this question as answered if you think it is.
    – Zac67 ♦
    Commented Jun 24, 2017 at 17:36

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