What’s My IP Address?

Sometimes you’ll find yourself on a stranger’s LAN and you won’t know the IP of the computer you’re using.

This box should display your real Internet IP address:
Free Privacy and Security tests at AuditMyPC.com

The Problem

Opening up a Command Prompt window and typing the ipconfig command ipconfig /all (or Winipcfg if you’re at a Win9X computer) sometimes won’t help – it will only return the IP address assigned to your computer by router (or static local IP), not the one your ISP has assigned your ADSL modem.

The Solution

There is a simple and elegant solution to this problem – hitting a web server on an external site. Web servers know your real IP address (it has to, otherwise how will they return the page on your request?). Now all you need is to ask them for that information. It can be done by running several scripts (which are beyond the scope of this page), or by going to sites that offer tools that will let you know your real IP address.

We need a tool that will show both IP addresses. What this means is that along with showing you the traditional IP address that your computer is using in it’s local environment (e.g. a LAN) it will also show you what your IP address is from the perspective of an “outsider” on the Internet. This is in contrast to the many tools and utilities available on the Internet that simply return the LAN address, which is useless if somebody on the Internet needs to connect to your computer.

So, unless you’re using NAT you should be able to get your IP address by looking at the following sites. And if it’s NAT you’re using, they will tell you the IP address of your NAT connection.
One cool tool is the CMDNET command-line tool by SPSoft. You can download it from HERE (v1.0, 61kb). It will give you your LAN IP, WAN IP and MAC addresses, and will also write them down to a text file of your choice.

Probably the easiest one of them all is to open IE, and in the address bar write down “whatismyip” (without the quotes) and press CTRL+ENTER:
 http://www.whatismyip.com
Another easy link can be reached by typing “showmyip” and pressing CTRL+ENTER:
http://www.showmyip.com

Other Tools

Many sites offer free IP address checks. Some of the best places to go are:
IP Address Check – Nice page with a lot of info about your IP and where you came from. Mostly in Turkish, but still quite useful
Broadband Reports IP Address verifier – Plus lots of cool tools.
GRC.com’s IP Agent and Shields Up test. A tool that will also scan your ports and try to probe them. Sometimes this tool won’t show your real IP, only the LAN one, so the site recommends running the Shields Up tool directly from the link above.
What is my IP Address? – Nice and clean. Small pop-up window, but it’s still in the limits. I’ve noticed that in some cases you only get your ISP web proxy IP address and not your true address, so use with caution.
Nice IP tool at IP-Calculator.com – Will tell you your own IP address but will also reveal your web proxy IP address. This is useful in case your ISP is using a hidden proxy, and most ISPs do.
IP2 – Free GUI Tool – One of my favorites, IP2 is a small program that you can use to determine your IP addresses – both WAN and LAN. I use this one as it’s the easiest of them all and will let you copy your IP addresses on the fly.

Other Sites

Not listed in any particular order:
Another IP finder at Internet-Help.net
Another IP finder
Another one
Yet another IP checker
There are many more sites like these. If you still don’t like any of the ones listed here you could go to Google and look for one yourself.

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