What is the IP and how can I find the IP of my PC

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The IP address is one of the most used terms today among all fans of the world of technology. The Internet has become essential in everyone's life, and IP addresses are an essential part of the Internet. We explain what the IP address is, what it is for, and how you can find out that of your PC.

What is public IP and private IP

IP is the acronym for " Internet Protocol " or "Internet Protocol" in the language of Cervantes. IP is a communication protocol through the Internet that makes it possible to navigate through all the content available worldwide. We can think of the IP as an identity card that is responsible for identifying you when you are connected to the network, but it goes much further as we will see below.

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You have to differentiate between public IP and private IP. The public IP is an identification code assigned to you by your Internet provider , and it serves to uniquely identify each user. Each public IP is unique and unrepeatable. The public IP can be fixed or dynamic, the difference being that the latter change over time.

The public IP is the one associated with each of the web addresses that we type in the browser. For example, when writing 'www.google.es', the browser automatically directs us to the IP address assigned to that domain. The DNS servers are in charge of making this translation in a totally transparent way to the user.

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On the other hand, we have the private IPs . These addresses are used in private networks by the devices connected to each other . An example of this is the Internet network that you have at home. Your computer, your laptop, your smartphone… each one of them has a private IP that identifies it within your home network.

Private IP addresses are also unique. This means that each of your devices will be associated with a different and unique address.

An IP address is made up of four numbers of up to three digits that are separated by three dots. The values ​​vary between 0 and 255. There are three classes of numbering that are reserved for private IPs, we detail them below:

  • Class A: from 10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255.
  • Class B: from 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255.
  • Class C: from 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255.

How to know the IP of my computer

Knowing the public IP of your computer is very simple. You just have to go to one of the many websites that exist to know this information. All of them work independently of the operating system, so you can use them with Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and on any device with access to the network and a browser.

An example of these sites is WhatsMyIP.com. As soon as you enter, it will show you what your IP address is.

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As for the private IP, obtaining it is also very simple, although in this case we will use a Windows 10 tool to obtain the data. The first thing will be to open a cmd command window, you can do it from the Start menu of the operating system.

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Once the cmd command console is ready, we will use the "ipconfig" command to see all the data related to our Internet connection. The value that interests us in this case is " IPv4 Address "

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It's that simple to know the public IP and the private IP, it will surely be useful to you on more than one occasion. Remember that you can share the post on social networks if you liked it, in this way you can help more users who need it.