The IP Address

This is a short little tutorial on the IP address. What is an IP address? First of all, IP is short for Internet Protocol. The IP address is made up of octets of binary code, but we see actual numbers instead. There are 4 parts to the IP address. It may look something like 192.168.1.1. In binary form, it would look something like the following: 11000000.10101000.00000001.00000001. To find your IP address of your computer that is currently connected to a network, go to Start, Run, type cmd, and in the MS-DOS window type "ipconfig" without the quotes. There will be some numbers pop up and the ones next to IP address are the ones you will be looking for. However, if you have a router on your home network, you will see the IP address of your computer as it appears on your home network. This is not the IP address of your computer when it is connected to the Internet. Your router has this address stored in its management console. To find out your WAN (Wide Area Network or in this case, IP address on the Internet) you must go into your router's configuration to see it. Addresses that begin with 10.x.x.x, 172.x.x.x, and 192.x.x.x are private addresses and are addresses your LAN will use. Your ISP has a block of addresses that it can assign to either your computer (if not connected to a home network) or to your router. To see what your IP address on the Internet is, go to IP Address World.