We use cookies on our website to provide you with the best possible user experience. By continuing to use our website or services, you agree to their use. More Information.
OK

What is my IP address?

IONOS IP Check

Your IP is:

157.36.211.41

Useful information about your IP

The task: Pointing data in the right direction

Every device with access to the internet has an IP address. It ensures that data is sent to the right recipient. Without you even noticing, your IP address is used when you open a web page and when sending emails. Your IP address is always assigned by your internet provider. Usually it consists of dynamically generated combinations of numbers and letters. Each new dial-up of the router leads to a new IP address.
Graphical display: Use the intuitive control panel

How IP addresses are constructed

Two types of IP addresses are distributed for surfing the Internet: IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, IPv4 being the old standard. IPv4 addresses consist of four blocks of numbers between 0 and 225 separated by dots. The fast growth of the internet necessitated a new standard for ensuring that more and more IP addresses could be generated. For this reason, the IPv6 method was introduced, although it is still a relatively uncommon practice. While IPv4 addresses consist only of numbers and full stops, IPv6 also uses letters in combination with colons and numbers.
Graphical display: IPv6 address

Safe assignment and data protection

To the average internet user an IP address will appear as no more than a random sequence of numbers, but in fact the numbers are assigned according to exact rules. They contain information about the respective internet provider for example, or convey the location of the dial-up node. The laws on storing and saving information, like the browser history, vary from country to country.
Graphical display: IP data transfer; Data transmission

Set up your own small server using your IP address

What is my IP address? Where can I find it? Most internet users never have to consider these kinds of questions, as IP addresses are exchanged completely automatically in the background without the user noticing. However, if you want to externally access a network or a router, or allow third-party access, you usually need to know the IP address. Installing an SFTP server or joining the server of a game like Minecraft requires entering your IP address.
Graphical display: Server IO address
Man with telephone handset
Your personal consultant

Helpful advice from a single point of contact. Exclusively for you. Experience customer service on a whole new plane. All this and more, free.

Learn more

More free IONOS tools

Icon: Website Checker

Website Checker

The Website Checker analyzes your website to see how well equipped it is for success online, and gives you tips on how you can improve it. You can implement many of these tips yourself. The Website Checker analyzes the source code of your website.
Icon: www domain

Domain checker

Test your perfect domain name with the easy to use domain checker and get suggestions for available domains. The domain checker tests for availability with classic extensions like .com, and .net, as well as with a huge selection of new top-level domains like .global.
Icon: App advisor

Whois Lookup

With the Whois Domain Lookup service, you will receive publicly available information about any registered domain name. This service may help you look up who owns a given domain, and determine whether it is still available or not.

IP address lookup

FAQ – Frequently asked questions

The IP address ensures that data arrives where it is supposed to. Every computer that is connected to the Internet is part of a network. Within this network, data is constantly sent and received. The IP address is a kind of individual identification number that enables targeted data exchange. For example, if you open a website, your browser transmits your IP address to the web server of the website. The web server then knows exactly where to send the data. Our IP Checker can show you this public IP address. As the IP address is provided by the server, it is not possible to change an IP address so it contains a specific sequence of numbers. However, restarting the router does cause a new random address to be reissued by the provider.

Beyond this, internal IP addresses are assigned within local networks and are not outwardly visible. This means that each device that dials in to a private wireless network is allocated its own IP address. The router automatically generates an IP address that changes with each browsing session. The Windows ipconfig command allows you to access the address data of a device in a local network. Mac OS users must enter ipconfig in the terminal. The router itself also has an IP address, which can be viewed using the same command. The IP address of the router is often called the standard gateway and consists of a static sequence of numbers, commonly 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. You can set up a fixed IP address in the network settings.

Usually the IP address is generated dynamically with every new browsing session through the internet provider. This means that every new dial-up generates a new IP address or at least once a day. This has the advantage that the assignment of IP addresses is done more efficiently, as all users are never online at the same time, and the dynamic method can also take the unused addresses into consideration. Dynamic IP addresses also contribute to online security, as they make identification and external attacks more difficult.

Along with dynamic IP addresses, static addresses are also used — most commonly if the IP in question belongs to a page, as websites are supposed to be easy to find for the users. This is why the Domain Name System (DNS) was introduced. A domain like www.ionos.com is much easier to remember than a seemingly meaningless number sequence. Every domain in turn leads to a web server with a fixed IP address.

When it comes to IP addresses, we differentiate between IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. An IPv4 address consists of four blocks of numbers separated by dots. In each block, any number between 0 and 225 can be used, which results in roughly 4.3 billion possible addresses. As the internet has grown so rapidly over the last few years, and will continue to grow in the future, this number is quickly becoming insufficient. This is why the IPv6 format is currently being introduced as the new norm, which can generate roughly sextillion new addresses. The structure of IPv6 addresses is less clear, as it uses both numbers and letters in eight separate blocks.

Your IP address is never just a ransom sequence of numbers or letters. Specific IP areas are allocated to certain providers or to big companies. There is no area or country code, like the ones found in telephone numbers when it comes to IP addresses though. Rather the IP address can be found through the so called dial-up node. It also shows which browser and operating system is being used. The internet provider can receive information on the user's online behavior during a web browsing session through the IP address. The regulations on what happens to this data after the browsing session is finished also varies depending on the country.

For security reasons, a router will block attempts to externally access a local network. However, in certain cases allowing external access can be beneficial. For example, this allows for you to provide others access to your network via Secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP), and thereby set up a server to transfer your files. Everyone who would like to provide their friends with a small gaming server in their home network needs the IP address to do so.

To subvert the router's firewall, ports are enabled to allow external access. To dial in to the game server, gamers need the IP address of the server. The exact configuration of the firewall depends on both the operating system and on the game server or SFTP software.

Contact us

We are here – drop us a line if you have any questions or concerns.

Handset Icon
1-484-254-5555
We're here whenever you need us, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Message us
Live Chat

Chat with one of our IONOS experts.

Chat