Wierd routing table entry in Redhat 9.0

From: James Harrison (jamesaharrisonuk_at_yaho.co.uk)
Date: 08/29/03 

Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 15:54:50 GMT

Hello all,

Can someone tell me why the following is in my routing table.

I am using Redhat 9.

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0

It is created in the ifup script

..
..
# Add Zeroconf route.
if [ -z "${NOZEROCONF}" -a "${ISALIAS}" = "no" ]; then
    ip route replace 169.254.0.0/16 dev ${REALDEVICE}
..
..

What is its purpose?

Thanks

James Harrison