What's My IP Address?

What's My IP

When your web browser or email application requests a web page or email from another computer on the Internet, it automatically gives away the computer address where it should send the information. This is called your computer's "IP address." For most users accessing the Internet, this IP address will change every time you log in. A constantly changing IP address is referred to as a Dynamic IP Address.

What's My IP Address Made Of?

IP addresses are created and managed by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). There are regional registries which are given 'super blocks'. These regional units then allocate smaller blocks to ISP's.

IPv4 uses 32-bit (4 byte addresses) that limit the number of addresses to 4,294,967,296 (2³²) possible 'what's my ip' combinations. However, many of these addresses are reserved for special reasons, such as private networks or multicast addresses (~19 million addresses). Becuase of this, the total number of IP addy's that can be given to public addressing a shortage of IPv4 address seems likely.

Your IP addresses is likely assigned by your internet service providers (ISP) and because they are registered, can be used to track most internet connected computers. IP addresses are often hard to remember, so they are often assigned a Host Name.