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An IP address is a device’s address on the internet. Without one, data has nowhere to go — like a letter with no address on it.
Where people get lost is that there is no single kind of IP. A phone has one; the network at home has another; the server your site lives on has a third. They are different things, and mixing them up costs hours spent fixing the wrong problem.
Fixed or changing
| Type | What it means |
| Static (fixed) | It does not change. This is what servers use — a site has to stay at the same address for the world to find it |
| Dynamic | It changes now and then, or whenever the equipment restarts. This is normal at home and on mobile |
| This is why you get blocked again. If your home IP is dynamic, allowing it through the firewall today guarantees nothing tomorrow — tomorrow it is a different number. See why your IP gets blocked by the firewall. |
Private or public
Inside your home, the router gives each device an address — the private IP, something like 192.168.1.5. It only exists inside that network.
To the outside world, all of those devices appear as one address: the public IP your provider assigns. That is the one websites see, and the one we ask for when something gets blocked.
| Want your public IP? No commands needed. It is in how to find your public IP address, which shows it to you in a second. |
And the private one?
You only need it for local network things — connecting a printer, reaching a NAS. Each system shows it somewhere different:
| System | Where |
| Windows | Open the Start menu, type cmd, and in the black window type ipconfig. It is the IPv4 Address line |
| macOS | Apple menu › System Settings › Network, then click the active connection |
| Android | Settings › About phone › Status |
| iPhone | Settings › Wi-Fi, then tap the i next to the connected network |
Shared or dedicated — what matters if you run a site
On shared hosting, several sites live on the same server and use the same IP. That is not a shortcut: it is how most of the web works. The server tells sites apart by the name the browser asks for, not by the address.
A dedicated IP is yours alone. It comes with VPS and dedicated servers, and there are cases where it genuinely pays off — they are all in dedicated or shared IP: which one you need, and when.
To find your hosting IP, the route is in what your hosting IP address is.
IPv4 and IPv6: why there are two
IPv4 is the long-standing format — four numbers from 0 to 255, like 203.0.113.10. It allows about 4.3 billion addresses, and it ran out: there are more connected devices than there are addresses.
Hence IPv6, longer and with letters — 2001:0db8:85a3::8a2e:0370:7334. The number of addresses it allows is large enough that it stops being a problem.
| The two coexist, and will keep doing so. You do not have to choose or do anything: systems use one or the other depending on what both ends of the connection support. |
How this connects to names
Nobody memorises addresses. That is what DNS is for: you type a name, and the system translates it to the right IP before the page opens. The translation lives in DNS records — see DNS records explained.
The translation also works backwards, from IP to name, and that is called reverse DNS. It sounds like a detail, but it decides whether your e-mail is accepted or discarded: PTR and reverse DNS.
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Not sure which of the addresses you were asked for? Ask us |
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