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What is my IP address?
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What is an IP address?
An IP address, short for Internet Protocol address, is a numeric label assigned by your internet service provider. Think of it as a digital home address that helps identify your device among billions of others.
An IP address is what directs data to its destination. Although we use website names (such as example.com) to browse, computers don’t understand words — only numbers. They find out the IP address of the website first (example.com = 103.86.98.1), locate it on the web, and finally display it on our screens.
How to find my IP address
You can easily locate your IP address on any device or operating system you use.
How to find my public IP address
To find your public IP address, you can scroll up to the top of this page. It displays your IP, the location you’re connecting from, your service provider, and whether or not your traffic is secured.
Why you should change your IP address
Gaming, streaming, browsing — whatever you do online, it will remain protected from third parties once you establish a VPN connection.
IPv4 vs. IPv6 addresses
The way an IP address looks depends on the Internet Protocol version it’s using — IPv4 or IPv6.
IPv4
IPv4 addresses are based on 32 binary bits, consist of four digits from 0 to 255, and are separated by dots. Most internet service providers still use IPv4 to issue IP addresses.
However, IPv4 faces a serious restriction — it can only generate 4.3 billion unique IP addresses. With over five billion people using the internet worldwide, IPv4 addresses are bound to run out before long.
IPv6
IPv6 addresses consist of eight blocks of numbers, with each block written as four hexadecimal digits and separated by colons.
Number groups in IPv6 addresses that contain only zeroes are often omitted to save space. Instead, a colon is added to indicate the gap, abridging the IP address to 2400:BB40:1100::1.
Is my IP address IPv4 or IPv6?
Your IP address can be IPv4 or IPv6, depending on what your internet service provider normally issues. You can check whether you have an IPv4 or an IPv6 address by using one of the IP checking methods detailed above. If your IP address is separated by dots, it’s IPv4, and if it uses colons, it’s IPv6.
Why hasn't IPv6 been fully implemented yet?
Unlike the IPv4 protocol, IPv6 won’t ever run out of unique IP addresses, because it can provide nearly 3.4×10^38 of them. Furthermore, some argue that IPv6 is a more efficient technology, providing better quality and connectivity.
However, IPv6 has not yet been fully implemented for two reasons:
IPv6 isn’t backward compatible with IPv4. You can’t access IPv4 websites if your device runs on the IPv6 protocol.
It’s hard to adopt the new technology without an immediate gain. IPv4 still suits our needs, and until we reach its limit, a worldwide shift is unlikely.
Public vs. private IP addresses
Public IP, also known as an external IP, is the address provided by your internet service provider. Devices on the same network share this IP address when accessing the internet. For specific details, such as location, you can perform an IP search.
Private, or local, IPs are assigned to each device on your network by your router. They let devices within the same network communicate with each other without access to the public internet.
Public IP address | Private IP address |
|---|---|
| Used externally for communication over the internet | Used internally for communication between your home or office devices |
| Assigned by an ISP | Assigned by a local router or a DHCP server |
| Unique | Not unique and may be reused in other networks |
| Example: 4.4.4.4. | Example: 192.168.1.100 |
| Used to identify individual devices on the open internet | Used to segment a larger network into smaller subnetworks |