Back in my college days, 169.254.x.y addresses were the bane of my existence, because my job was getting students' computers set up with the brand-new Ethernet connection in their dorm room. This usually required a tech to come out to their room and configure Windows 95 properly, with IP and DHCP instead of Novell Netware and IPX (I don't remember why Netware/IPX was the default on so many Windows 95 installs, but that was definitely what I found most often when I went to look at someone's computer that "wasn't connecting to the Internet".)

Occasionally we had someone who knew what they were doing and had their Windows 95 settings set up correctly, and then all we had to do was activate their room's Ethernet port and add their MAC address to the DHCP server's list of authorized MACs. But most often I or one of the other techs had to head down to the person's dorm room and set up their computer's network settings correctly before it would work. Once the 169.254 address was replaced by 192.168, my job was finally done. But there were times when that took some doing.