How To Find Ip Address Of Device Connected To Computer

Every device connected to a network—computer, tablet, camera, any—needs a unique identifier so that other devices know how to reach it. In the world of TCP/IP networking, that identifier is the Internet Protocol (IP) accost.

If you've worked with computers for whatsoever amount of time, you've likely been exposed to IP addresses—those numerical sequences that look something like 192.168.0.15. Virtually of the time, nosotros don't have to bargain with them direct, since our devices and networks have care of that stuff backside the scenes. When nosotros do accept to deal with them, we ofttimes just follow instructions about what numbers to put where. Merely, if you've ever wanted to dive a little deeper into what those numbers hateful, this article is for y'all.

RELATED: 8 Common Network Utilities Explained

Why should you care? Well, agreement how IP addresses piece of work is vital if you ever want to troubleshoot why your network isn't working right, or why a detail device isn't connecting the way you lot'd expect it to. And, if you e'er need to ready something a niggling more advanced—like hosting a game server or media server to which friends from the net can connect—y'all'll need to know something nigh IP addressing. Plus, it's kind of fascinating.

Note: Nosotros're going to be covering the basics of IP addressing in this article, the kind of stuff that people who use IP addresses, merely never actually thought much about them, might want to know. Nosotros're not going to be covering some of the more than advanced, or professional, level stuff, like IP classes, classless routing, and custom subnetting…but we will betoken to some sources for further reading as we keep.

What Is an IP Address?

An IP address uniquely identifies a device on a network. You've seen these addresses earlier; they expect something similar 192.168.1.34.

An IP address is always a set of four numbers like that. Each number can range from 0 to 255. So, the total IP addressing range goes from 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255.

The reason each number tin can only reach up to 255 is that each of the numbers is really an eight digit binary number (sometimes called an octet). In an octet, the number zero would be 00000000, while the number 255 would be 11111111, the maximum number the octet tin can reach. That IP address we mentioned before (192.168.ane.34) in binary would look like this: 11000000.10101000.00000001.00100010.

Computers work with the binary format, only we humans notice it much easier to work with the decimal format. Nevertheless, knowing that the addresses are actually binary numbers will help u.s. sympathise why some things surrounding IP addresses work the way they do.

Don't worry, though! We're not going to be throwing a lot of binary or math at yous in this article, and then just bear with us a flake longer.

The Two Parts of An IP Accost

A device'southward IP address actually consists of two split parts:

Network ID: The network ID is a function of the IP address starting from the left that identifies the specific network on which the device is located. On a typical dwelling network, where a device has the IP accost 192.168.1.34, the 192.168.i role of the accost will be the network ID. It's custom to fill in the missing concluding part with a zero, so we might say that the network ID of the device is 192.168.i.0.
Host ID: The host ID is the part of the IP address not taken upward by the network ID. It identifies a specific device (in the TCP/IP world, we call devices "hosts") on that network. Standing our instance of the IP address 192.168.1.34, the host ID would be 34—the host'southward unique ID on the 192.168.i.0 network.

On your home network, and then, you lot might see several devices with IP address like 192.168.i.1, 192.168.one.2, 192.168.1 30, and 192.168.i.34. All of these are unique devices (with host IDs 1, 2, 30, and 34 in this instance) on the aforementioned network (with the network ID 192.168.1.0).

To film all this a trivial meliorate, let's plow to an analogy. It's pretty like to how street addresses work within a city. Take an address like 2022 Paradise Street. The street proper name is like the network ID, and the house number is like the host ID. Within a city, no 2 streets volition be named the same, just like no ii network IDs on the same network volition be named the same. On a particular street, every house number is unique, just like all host iDs within a item network ID are unique.

The Subnet Mask

So, how does your device make up one's mind which function of the IP accost is the network ID and which part the host ID? For that, they use a 2nd number that you'll always see in association with an IP address. That number is chosen the subnet mask.

On near simple networks (like the ones in homes or small businesses), yous'll run across subnet masks similar 255.255.255.0, where all four numbers are either 255 or 0. The position of the changes from 255 to 0 signal the division between the network and host ID. The 255s "mask out" the network ID from the equation.

Note: The basic subnet masks we're describing here are known equally default subnet masks. Things become more than complicated than this on bigger networks. People oft apply custom subnet masks (where the position of the break betwixt zeros and ones shifts within an octet) to create multiple subnets on the same network. That's a fiddling beyond the scope of this article, just if y'all're interested, Cisco has a pretty good guide on subnetting.

The Default Gateway Address

RELATED: Agreement Routers, Switches, and Network Hardware

In add-on to the IP address itself and the associated subnet mask, you'll also run across a default gateway address listed along with IP addressing data. Depending on the platform you're using, this accost might be chosen something unlike. It's sometimes called the "router," "router accost," default route," or merely "gateway." These are withal matter. It's the default IP address to which a device sends network data when that data is intended to get to a different network (one with a different network ID) than the ane the device is on.

The simplest example of this is establish in a typical domicile network.

If you accept a home network with multiple devices, yous probable have a router that's connected to the internet through a modem. That router might be a dissever device, or it might be role of a modem/router combo unit supplied by your net provider. The router sits between the computers and devices on your network and the more public-facing devices on the internet, passing (or routing) traffic back and forth.

Say you lot fire upwardly your browser and head to www.howtogeek.com. Your computer sends a asking to our site'southward IP accost. Since our servers are on the internet rather than on your habitation network, that traffic is sent from your PC to your router (the gateway), and your router forwards the asking on to our server. The server sends the correct information back to your router, which and then routes the information back to the device that requested information technology, and you come across our site pop upwards in your browser.

Typically, routers are configured past default to accept their individual IP address (their address on the local network) as the get-go host ID. And so, for example, on a home network that uses 192.168.one.0 for a network ID, the router is ordinarily going to exist 192.168.1.1. Of course, similar about things, you tin can configure that to be something different if y'all want.

RELATED: How to Observe Your Individual and Public IP Addresses

DNS Servers

There's i final piece of information you'll see assigned alongside a device's IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway accost: the addresses of one or two default Domain Proper noun Organization (DNS) servers. We humans piece of work much better with names than numerical addresses. Typing world wide web.howtogeek.com into your browser's address bar is much easier than remembering and typing our site'south IP address.

DNS works kind of like a telephone book, looking up human-readable things like website names, and converting those to IP addresses. DNS does this by storing all that information on a organisation of linked DNS servers across the internet. Your devices need to know the addresses of DNS servers to which to send their queries.

RELATED: What Is DNS, and Should I Use Another DNS Server?

On a typical small or domicile network, the DNS server IP addresses are ofttimes the aforementioned as the default gateway address. Devices ship their DNS queries to your router, which then forwards the requests on to whatever DNS servers the router is configured to use. By default, these are usually whatever DNS servers your Internet access provider provides, but you tin change those to use dissimilar DNS servers if you want. Sometimes, yous might have better success using DNS servers provided by third parties, similar Google or OpenDNS.

What's the Difference Betwixt IPv4 and IPv6?

You as well may have noticed while browsing through settings a unlike type of IP address, called an IPv6 address. The types of IP addresses we've talked about so far are addresses used by IP version 4 (IPv4)—a protocol developed in the late 70s. They apply the 32 binary bits we talked almost (in iv octets) to provide a total of 4.29 billion possible unique addresses. While that sounds like a lot, all the publicly bachelor addresses were long agone assigned to businesses. Many of them are unused, but they are assigned and unavailable for general use.

In the mid-90s, worried about the potential shortage of IP addresses, the internet Engineering science Task Force (IETF) designed IPv6. IPv6 uses a 128-bit address instead of the 32-bit address of IPv4, so the full number of unique addresses is measured in the undecillions—a number big enough that it'southward unlikely to always run out.

Unlike the dotted decimal notation used in IPv4, IPv6 addresses are expressed as viii number groups, divided by colons. Each group has iv hexadecimal digits that represents sixteen binary digits (so, information technology'south referred to as a hextet). A typical IPv6 address might look something similar this:

2601:7c1:100:ef69:b5ed:ed57:dbc0:2c1e

The thing is, the shortage of IPv4 addresses that acquired all the business organization ended up being mitigated to a large extent past the increased employ of private IP addresses behind routers. More and more people created their own individual networks, using those private IP addresses that aren't exposed publicly.

And then, fifty-fifty though IPv6 is still a major player and that transition will still happen, it never happened every bit fully as predicted—at least non still. If yous're interested in learning more, cheque out this history and timeline of IPv6.

How Does a Device Get Its IP Accost?

Now that you know the nuts of how IP addresses work, allow's talk about how devices get their IP addresses in the first identify. There are really two types of IP assignments: dynamic and static.

RELATED: How to Detect Any Device'southward IP Address, MAC Address, and Other Network Connection Details

A dynamic IP address is assigned automatically when a device connects to a network. The vast bulk of networks today (including your home network) use something called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to make this happen. DHCP is built into your router. When a device connects to the network, it sends out a broadcast message requesting an IP accost. DHCP intercepts this message, and then assigns an IP address to that device from a pool of available IP addresses.

There are sure individual IP address ranges routers will employ for this purpose. Which is used depends on who made your router, or how you lot have set things up yourself. Those private IP ranges include:

10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255: If you're a Comcast/Xfinity customer, the router provided by your Internet access provider assigns addresses in this range. Some other ISPs besides use these addresses on their routers, as does Apple on their Airdrome routers.
192.168.0.0 – 192.168.255.255: About commercial routers are set up up to assign IP addresses in this range. For example, about Linksys routers utilise the 192.168.1.0 network, while D-Link and Netgear both use the 198.168.0.0 range
172.16.0.0 – 172.xvi.255.255: This range is rarely used past any commercial vendors by default.
169.254.0.0 – 169.254.255.255: This is a special range used by a protocol named Automatic Private IP Addressing. If your computer (or other device) is set upward to retrieve its IP address automatically, but cannot find a DHCP server, information technology assigns itself an address in this range. If yous see one of these addresses, it tells you that your device could non achieve the DHCP server when it came time to get an IP address, and you may have a networking upshot or trouble with your router.

The thing most dynamic addresses is that they tin sometimes change. DHCP servers lease IP addresses to devices, and when those leases are upward, the devices must renew the lease. Sometimes, devices will get a different IP address from the pool of addresses the server can assign.

Most of the fourth dimension, this is non a big deal, and everything will "simply work". Occasionally, however, you might desire to give a device an IP address that does not change. For example, maybe you lot have a device that y'all need to access manually, and y'all detect it easier to remember an IP accost than a name. Or possibly you have certain apps that can simply connect to network devices using their IP address.

In those cases, you can assign a static IP address to those devices. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can manually configure the device with a static IP address yourself, although this can sometimes exist janky. The other, more elegant solution is to configure your router to assign static IP addresses to sure devices during what would normally exist dynamic consignment by the DHCP server. That manner, the IP address never changes, just you don't interrupt the DHCP process that keeps everything working smoothly.