This article will tell you how you can easily find your public and private IP address on Windows 10. But before that, let’s get familiar with what is IP address:
Let’s suppose it’s your birthday, and your uncle who lives in America wants to send you a present. But he doesn’t know your home address. Will he be able to send you the present? Of course not!
Just like you have your home address to receive mails, couriers, etc, your computer on which you are reading this article also has addresses for receiving data from the web. This address is nothing but an IP address. Every single website you visit on the internet has a unique IP address. Yes, this website also has a unique address. IP addresses help us to pinpoint every device which is connected to the internet. Now, let’s talk about the versions of IP address:
IPv4 address:
- It stands for Internet Protocol Version 4
- 4 bytes each
- 3 billion possible addresses
- Example: 192.168.0.102
IPv6 address:
- It stands for Internet Protocol Version 6
- 128 bytes each
- 340 undecillion possible addresses
- Example: fe80::9016:9401:8b91:1d36%16
You might be thinking about why we need two different versions of IP addresses? Let me answer this question for you. Have you noticed that only 4.3 billion IP addresses are possible if we use IPv4, but an explosive growth of internet devices has been noticed in the past few years? Back in 2011, we ran out of IPv4 addresses. Even Microsoft was ready to pay millions of dollars to buy unused IP addresses. That’s why we need an IPv6 address. Don’t worry! IPv6 is designed in such a way that we will never run out of IPv6 addresses.
Now, let’s talk about the WAN (Wide Area Network) IP address and LAN (Local Area Network) IP address. Any device connected to the internet has a WAN IP and a LAN IP. You might be thinking earlier that we have a unique IP, and now I’m saying that every device has two IPs. Sounds confusing? Stick with me on this article, and you will get your answer.
- Every device has two IPs (WAN and LAN)
- WAN is the public one.
- LAN is the private one.
- The world sees WAN IP.
- You only see LAN IP.
- LAN IP or internal IP is assigned to your computer by your router.
- WAN IP is assigned to your router by your ISP (Internet Service Provider)
How to find your IP Address on Windows command prompt?
Follow the steps given below to find your computer IP address on Windows 10:
- Type “cmd” in the search bar and open the command prompt.
- Type “ipconfig” and hit enter.
The IP address shown in the command prompt is your local area address. If you want to find your wide-area address, then open your web browser and head over to whatismyipaddress.com
So, that’s how you can easily check your IP address in Windows 10.