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Why check my IP Address?

An IP address shows the information on where a user is located geographically. It shows your location; city, region, country, ISP and location on a map. This tool shows what a hacker or any other entity may see when they search your location.

Use this IP Trace tool to do a location Lookup for any IP Address.

What is my IP Location aka Geolocation?

IP Location is where a device using the IP address is geographically located. Using a mapping from IP address to latitude and longitude intersection we are able to tell the exact location from where the user is connecting from.

One thing I have found is that with Mobile phones it is tricky to get the exact location. The reason is that the mobile location, an unwired connection is using the mobile company’s data center. Mobile companies do not provide the exact Geolocation of the mobile user and approximate it, sometimes to a nearby location.

How and why would anyone use my IP?

An IP address is a unique piece of information used to uniquely identify a user. This information can be used for malicious reasons by hackers or it could be used by websites that track your activity and then bombard you with marketing messages.

Marketing companies use this information to identify and track you whenever you visit websites and other services online. Many who have used Torrent services have also been tracked by their IP address for various reasons.

There are also times when you may want to hide your IP address, such as when traveling and you are not able to reach the services that you had available from your home or office. People such as journalists also hide their identities to get around censorship imposed upon them.

What Is An IP Address?

IP address stands for Internet Protocol Address. An IP is a unique number assigned to all information technology connected devices such as printers, routers, modems, and even refrigerators. The IP address identifies and allows these devices the ability to communicate with each other on an internal or external computer network. Any device that transmits or receives internet traffic will be assigned an IP address.

There is a standard of communication which is called an Internet Protocol (IP) standard. In laymans terms it is the same as your home address. In order for you to receive snail mail, the sending party must have your correct mailing address (IP address). If any of the mailing information is incorrect, you do not receive bills, pizza coupons or your tax refund.

The same is true for all equipment on the internet. Without this specific address, information cannot be received.

IP addresses may either be assigned static or dynamic. Static IPs are reserved for an Email server/Business server or a permanent home resident. These IPs are assigned from a pool of available addresses from your Internet Service Provider. A static IP may not be available in all areas and may cost extra.

Dynamic IP address are usually assigned on a first come, first served basis. The types of IP addresses that are dynamic are often assigned to residential customers.

Public vs. Private IP likely means someone wants to remain anonymous. The best way to accomplish this is by using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service or proxy servers.

However, in tech terms private IP addresses are those addresses that are reserved for internal network use only. Your home router has an external IP address and internal IP address. The internal IP address is likely 192.168.1.1. Your router will assign private IPs to all connected devices on your home network.

The current versions of IP addresses being assigned are IPv4 and IPv6.

What Is IPv4?

IP version 4 is currently used by most network devices. However, with more and more computers accessing the internet, IPv4 addresses are running out quickly. Just like in a city, addresses have to be created for new neighborhoods but, if your neighborhood gets too large, you will have to come up with an entire new pool of addresses. There are exactly 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses that can be assigned. IPv4 addresses consist of four octets using 0-255 and are separated by decimals like this 75.0.253.255.

What Is IPv6?

Internet Protocol version 6 is the replacement for the aging IPv4. An IPv6 address consists of 8 groups of four hexadecimal digits (0-9 and a-f) separated by colons and looks like this 2600:1005:b062:61e4:74d7:f292:802c:fbfd. If one of the groups only contains zeros, that group can be omitted.

One example is 2600:1005:b062:0000:74d7:f292:802c:fbfd can be rewritten as 2600:1005:b062::74d7:f292:802c:fbfd. The estimated number of unique addresses for IPv6 is 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 or 2^128.

The old and current standard of addresses was this: 192.168.100.100 and the new way can be written different ways but means the same and are all valid.

• 1080:0000:0000:0000:0000:0034:0000:417A
• 1080:0:0:0:0:34:0:417A
• 1080::34:0:417A

Static IP vs. Dynamic IP The short definition is a static IP doesn’t change where a dynamic IP can change. A dynamic IP will not always change though as it depends on how the ISP has the IP address lease times and assignments setup.