This article assumes that the reader has absolutely no knowledge of networking equipment and covers the very basics of IP addressing. It teaches different ways to find out the IP address of a device.
At the center of your Internet enabled network is your modem & router. You may have heard the terms “modem” and “router” used interchangeably and you could be forgiven for thinking that a modem is the same as a router. They are often sold as a single product known as a combined Modem/Router. It is not essential to have an in-depth knowledge of either device, however, it is important to understand that they are indeed different.
A modem is responsible for negotiating and maintaining a connection to the internet via your ISP network. This could be in the form of cable, DSL, WiMax or any other technology, but as far as a computer is concerned, there is no difference between them.
A router provides a range of ports that allow many computers or network devices to connect together and share a single internet connection. The router connects to the modem and relies on it for a connection to the Internet.
Now that we know a little more about the modem & router, let’s look at what happens when you connect a network enabled device or PC to your router.
Every PC or device on a network requires something called an IP address in order for it to function correctly and to be visible to other devices on the network. So just where does your PC or device get this IP address from?
It’s the job of your router to hand out IP addresses to each device that forms part of your network. It uses a technology known as DHCP which dynamically allocates an IP address to each device as it is plugged into one of its ports. Your router itself will have a default IP address and although 192.168.0.1 is probably the most common, it could be easily be something like 10.0.0.1
If your router address is 192.168.0.1, the first device you plug into a port will probably be allocated an IP address of 192.168.0.2, the second will be allocated 192.168.0.3 and so on. This allows you to make a good guess at what the IP address of a particular device might be, but there are better ways to find out.
On a Windows computer, the old fashioned way is to go to the MSDOS Prompt, type in “ipconfig” on the command line and hit the enter key. The screen will then display some information about the network settings on your PC and the two of most interest to you are:
IPv4 Address – the IP address of your computer
Default Gateway – the IP address of your router
A more modern, but also more complex way to find the same information is by checking your network settings from within Windows. Unfortunately, Microsoft have changed the way this is done in every version of Windows and it can be hard work finding the settings for your network card. Once you manage to locate the settings on your particular version of Windows, view the properties of your network card and you will see the IP address of your computer and router.
The IP addresses that we have mentioned so far are referred to as internal IP addresses and they are only useful within the internal boundaries of your local network. You may have heard of external IP addresses, also referred to as public – so what are they and how do they differ from internal IP addresses?
An external IP address is used to connect your network to the Internet. An external IP address will be allocated to your modem as it negotiates a connection with your ISP. The external IP address of your modem is visible to every computer on the Internet, which may be good for accessing all the resources that the Internet has to offer, but how do you prevent the undesirables out there from gaining access to your private network?
This is the job of your router and it uses a combination of technologies behind the scenes to prevent this from happening.
There are two different ways to find out what the external IP address of your modem is. One way is to log into the web interface of your modem/router and look through the WAN settings. You will need to have a login and password to get into your modem/router and the internal settings can be quite daunting to an inexperienced user. A much easier way is to go to a web site that is designed to display your external IP address when you visit.
One good web site is whatismyip.com and it happens to have a FAQ section about IP addresses which you can use to build on what you have learned from this article.
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