How do you find an IP address of a host?

Networks, and the internet, don't identify computers (of any size, even your smartphone) by the name you give them. Computers prefer numbers, and the numbers they use as identifiers are called IP addresses.

The "IP" stands for "internet protocol," which is part of the Transmission Control Protocol/internet Protocol (TPC/IP). It's all called IP for short, and TCP/IP is the language used for communication by most networks.

When it comes to your computer(s), there are actually several IP addresses involved. One is how the computer talks to the internet at large, which is the IP address of your router. That IP address is generally assigned to the router by your internet service provider (ISP); the router, in turn, handles all the traffic from your computers and other devices out to the internet. So even though a website only sees a request come in from the IP address on the router, the router knows how to route the information to/from the computer. (That's why it's called a router.)

Computers on internal networks, be it Wi-Fi or Ethernet, at home or in the office, have their own IP addresses assigned to them (usually by the router). That way, all the nodes on the internal network can communicate. The protocol used by the router to assign IP addresses is called Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP).

If you have an IP address assigned, it's typically considered a "dynamic IP" because it could be temporary; the router might give the node in question a different IP address at a later time (same with the IP address your ISP gives your router). However, you can set up "static IP addresses" on computers so they never change—this can be important for some kinds of network communications, especially if it's crucial to be able to find that same node over and over. You could also get a static IP for your router—which is handy if you run a web server, for example, but expect your ISP to charge extra.

IP addresses are typically in the same format as a 32-bit number, shown as four decimal numbers each with a range of 0 to 255, separated by dots—each set of three numbers is called an octet. This format is used by IP version 4 (or IPv4). With it, you could—in theory—have 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 out there. However, this limited the world to a possible 4+ billion IP addresses, which isn't enough.

So, there's also IPv6, which is 128-bit, with eight groups of four hexadecimal digits (numbers and lower-case letters mixed), all separated by a colon (for example: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334). That offers a lot more than 4 billion addresses. The actual number is a 34 with 37 zeros after it (or 2 to the 128th power), which is technically 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,455. That's a lot of addresses.

That's all good to know, but how do you find your IP address?

Find Your Internet/Public IP Address

There may come a time when you need to know the IP address of your router, as assigned by your ISP. This can be particularly handy for things like VoIP calls or remote control software.

What you'll also find is that there's lots of information about you attached to that IP address, specifically your ISP's name and your general location (called a GeoIP). That's because ISPs dole out a range of IP addresses. Figuring out your provider and general location based on IP address is as simple as consulting a public list.

The simplest way to check your router's public IP address is to search "what is my IP?" on a search engine.

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About Eric Griffith

Features Editor

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally for 30 years, more than half of that time with PCMag. I run several special projects including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys, and yearly coverage of the Fastest ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs. I work from my home, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

Your problem can be solved via command. Like the picture I posted below. You may have mistakenly marked the yellow mark as a MAC address, but they are actually IPv6 addresses. When you use the ping command, you can add "-4" behind the host name to display the IPv4 address.

ping hostname -4

I also have a batch file that returns the hostname and IP address of the computer at the same time. You can write the following code to a txt file and change the extension to .bat. Then double-click the file to get the computer name and ip address. I hope this will help you.

Code:

@echo off

 title Display your IP and hostname

 color F9

 @echo -

 for /f "tokens=2 delims=:" %%i in ('ipconfig^|findstr "Address"') do set ip=%%i

 @echo Your ip address is :%ip%

 @echo Your computer name is :%COMPUTERNAME%

Echo press any key to exit...

pause>NUL

Where can I find the host IP address?

What is the easiest way to find an IP address?