IP Location

Your IP address	2600:1f28:365:80b0:54a5:140d:52a0:3a84
Latitude	39.0469
Longitude	-77.4903
Country	United States
Region	Virginia
City	Ashburn

What is an IP address?

An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as 192.0.2.1 that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.[1][2] An IP address serves two main functions: network interface identification and location addressing. Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.[2] However, because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP (IPv6), using 128 bits for the IP address, was standardized in 1998.[3][4][5] IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s. IP addresses are written and displayed in human-readable notations, such as 192.0.2.1 in IPv4, and 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 in IPv6. The size of the routing prefix of the address is designated in CIDR notation by suffixing the address with the number of significant bits, e.g., 192.0.2.1/24, which is equivalent to the historically used subnet mask 255.255.255.0. The IP address space is managed globally by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and by five regional Internet registries (RIRs) responsible in their designated territories for assignment to local Internet registries, such as Internet service providers (ISPs), and other end users. IPv4 addresses were distributed by IANA to the RIRs in blocks of approximately 16.8 million addresses each, but have been exhausted at the IANA level since 2011. Only one of the RIRs still has a supply for local assignments in Africa.[6] Some IPv4 addresses are reserved for private networks and are not globally unique. Network administrators assign an IP address to each device connected to a network. Such assignments may be on a static (fixed or permanent) or dynamic basis, depending on network practices and software features.

What does a public IP address tell you?

A public IP address is a globally routable unicast IP address, meaning that the address is not an address reserved for use in private networks, such as those reserved by RFC 1918, or the various IPv6 address formats of local scope or site-local scope, for example for link-local addressing. Public IP addresses may be used for communication between hosts on the global Internet. In a home situation, a public IP address is the IP address assigned to the home's network by the ISP. In this case, it is also locally visible by logging into the router configuration.[30] Most public IP addresses change, and relatively often. Any type of IP address that changes is called a dynamic IP address. In home networks, the ISP usually assigns a dynamic IP. If an ISP gave a home network an unchanging address, it's more likely to be abused by customers who host websites from home, or by hackers who can try the same IP address over and over until they breach a network.[30]. Additionally, it also gives information about who controls that IP address, which in most cases will be an internet service provider (ISP) such as Comcast, Verizon, Frontier, etc.

How can I find my public IP address?

There are numerous ways to find your public IP address. The easiest way is right on this page. In the search bar at the top of our site, your public IP address is already pre-filled in. If you don’t see it, just refresh the page.

What else can I use this tool for?

If you have a public IP address that’s not connected to the system you’re using right now, you can check its location. Just key in the address in the search bar above. This is useful if you want to check the approximate location of another connected system, such as a smartphone or even an internet-connected car.

You can also use this tool if you are using a virtual private network (VPN). A VPN masks your public IP address, making it seem like your system is located in a different place. If you check this tool and it shows a different IP address from what your ISP provides, that means your VPN is working correctly.

Private IP Addresses

Early network design, when global end-to-end connectivity was envisioned for communications with all Internet hosts, intended that IP addresses be globally unique. However, it was found that this was not always necessary as private networks developed and public address space needed to be conserved. Computers not connected to the Internet, such as factory machines that communicate only with each other via TCP/IP, need not have globally unique IP addresses. Today, such private networks are widely used and typically connect to the Internet with network address translation (NAT), when needed. Three non-overlapping ranges of IPv4 addresses for private networks are reserved.[9] These addresses are not routed on the Internet and thus their use need not be coordinated with an IP address registry. Any user may use any of the reserved blocks. Typically, a network administrator will divide a block into subnets; for example, many home routers automatically use a default address range of 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.0.255 (192.168.0.0/24).