If you need to determine the IP address systems on the Internet will see as your address, you can go to any of the following sites:
- WhatIsMyIP.com
- WhatIsMyIP.org
- Canadian Web Solutions
- internet-help.net (click on the Quick-Find link)
Keep in mind that address is not necessarily the IP address assigned to your computer if you are on a Local Area Network (LAN). If you are behind a firewall or a router performing Network Address Translation (NAT), your locally assigned address may differ from the address websites and other servers on the Internet see as your originating address. If your router is performing NAT, there may be multiple computers behind the router with unique IP addresses, but the router may have ony one outside IP address. The router keeps track of which connections are associated with which inside IP addresses.
You can determine your system's actual address by going to What is my IP Address?. Or if you are using a PC running Windows by getting a command prompt by clicking on Start, Run, and then typing command and hitting enter. Then type ipconfig, which will show you your IP address, your subnet mask, and the default gateway address, which is the address of the system, e.g. a router, that your system would use to gain access to the Internet. On a Linux system, if you are logged on as root, you can type ifconfig -a, then look for the "inet addr" value, which will usually be associated with the eth0 interface. The l0 interface is a "loopback" address of 127.0.0.1, which is just an address that allows a system to communicate with itself.
