Did you ever wonder how the million of computers online can tell that your computer is the one it’s talking to? How can a computer pinpoint which computer is telling them to run a program or start a server? This is all explain when you look at the IP Address of a computer. An IP Address, in small terms, is unique set of numbers, binary for computers and dotted decimal for humans, that identifies any computer or machine that log onto the Internet.
A computers IP Address can look something like this:
216.28.65.133
Or, to a computer, it can look like this:
11010110.1110001010.1100100.101101010
The first set is in Dotted Decimal Number while the seconds set is in binary. I hope you can tell why humans like to read it in DD Numbers. You can learn from any small computer class that the four sets of numbers, called octets, are given to computers in certain groups that make it easier to organize and understand what kind of network the machine is on or is using. The IP Address, or Internet protocol, can be from v4 or v6, version 4 or version 6. Version 4 is the most frequently used and will look like the set that I have displayed above.
There are a couple of ways you can find your IP Address. There are sites like whatismyipaddress.com and whatismyip.com that will just flat out tell you what your ip address is. There is a way to find this out if you don’t want to use these sites however. I listed these easy steps below. It only works for windows computers though:
FIND YOUR IP ADDRESS
1)Go to your start menu and click on RUN
2)Type cmd into the run command window
3)You will see a black screen open up that says something like this:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] — version will vary
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:Documents and SettingsUserName>
4)After you see this screen, type in ipconfig/all to find and view you IP Address.
RENEW YOUR IP ADDRESS
There are also ways for you to renew your IP Address. This will help if your IP Address is being blocked or spammed. You will use the same setup for finding your IP Address except your 4th and 5th steps will look like this:
4)After you see this screen, type in ipconfig/release then press enter.
5)Type in ipconfig/renew then press enter.
This will give you a fresh IP Address that you can now use to access the Internet and browse thousands of sites!
