How to find the IP address of your PC?

You know what is your PC's IP address? Don't know :( No probs.. this post will help you. :)

You may have different OS in your PC. You can get the steps for all the OS below.

Windows:

In versions of Windows from Windows 2000 and later, run the Windows Command Prompt. You can open Command Prompt as follows.

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Start >> All Programs >> Accessories
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In the command prompt, type 'ipconfig' and you'll get something similar to this:

=========================================
Windows IP Configuration


Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:


Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
=========================================

(In Windows 98 and 95, you can Start->Run a program called "winipcfg" and get roughly the same information without using a command prompt.)

Linux:

Open terminal. You can open terminal as follows.

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Applications >> Accessories >> Terminal
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Execute the command 'ifconfig' (ipconfig in Windows). You will get something similar to this:

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$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:b9:05:91:c8
          inet addr:172.17.3.11  Bcast:172.17.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:b9ff:fe05:91c8/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1169781 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1459936 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:560307361 (560.3 MB)  TX bytes:1599606612 (1.5 GB)
          Interrupt:16
=========================================

The IP address is '172.17.3.11' near to 'inet addr'.

Since I'm behind a router, this is not the IP address that will actually be used when I access the internet.

Your Internet IP Address:

The IP address assigned to your internet connection is most easily seen by visiting any of the many "show me my IP address" pages on the internet.

Some example links are given below.

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http://www.whatismyip.com/
http://ipchicken.com/
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Why are they different?

Sometimes they're not. If your computer is connected directly to the internet, then your machine is assigned an internet IP address. The IP address you see using ipconfig will be the same as that which you see reported by the "what's my IP" sites.

If you're behind a router (or a modem that is acting as a NAT router) then the internet IP address is actually assigned to the router. The router then hands out "local" IP addresses to the individual machines connected to it. Those are the "192.168." addresses you'll commonly see when running ipconfig. In fact, "192.168.x.x" is an invalid internet IP address, as that range, and a couple of others, are reserved exclusively for local network use.

When you're behind a NAT router, "ipconfig" will report your machine's local IP address, and the IP reporting web sites will show you your internet IP address.

The local IP address of the machine are in any of the following range

192.168.X.X
172.16.X.X to 172.31.X.X
10.X.X.X

I hope you enjoyed this post :) you can feel free to comment if you have any doubts :)