Every website has at least one associated IP address that it uses to communicate with devices on a network. Because remembering these random strings of numbers would be difficult, developers created the Domain Name System (DNS). DNS resolves domain names (like WhatIsMyIP.com) to numerical IP addresses, which computers then use to communicate. However, as a user, you may want to find the IP address of a website in addition to knowing the domain name. By using either the ping command, the nslookup command, or the DNS lookup tool, you can easily find the IP address of a website in just a few steps. Show Using the ping commandYou can find the IP address of any website through the command prompt by using the ping command. The ping command checks the response time for a connection, which indicates the connection’s reliability, but it also returns the IP address of a website. To find the IP address of a website with the ping command, open the command prompt and type: ping examplewebsite.com Below, you can see the pinging results for google.com.  For Mac users, the same command can be performed in Terminal. Open terminal and enter the same command as above (ping examplewebsite.com). The results are shown below. As seen in this example, the IPv4 address of the google.com website is 108.177.122.139. The IPv6 address is 2607:f8b0:4004:815::200e. Using the nslookup commandAnother way to check a website’s IP address using the command line tool is with the nslookup command. Most operating systems, whether they be Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Linux, or another system, provide the nslookup tool as it’s specifically intended for looking up IP addresses. The nslookup tool provides more information to users than the ping command, though both work to find a website’s IP address. To find the IP address of a website with the nslookup command, open the command prompt and type: nslookup examplewebsite.com Below is an example of the command run on google.com in the Microsoft Windows system. The line immediately below the Server line is the IP address of the DNS server that provided the information for google.com, which is 2001:578:3f::30. The Addresses line shows an IPv6 address for google.com, which is 2607.f8b0:4004:815::200e. Mac users can open Terminal to run the same command. Below, you can see the nslookup results for google.com through Terminal. With this command, we can see that an IPv4 address is shown below the Addresses line for google.com – 172.217.15.110. Using the DNS lookup toolThough both the ping command and nslookup command are options for finding the IP address of a website, the simplest way to check the IP address of a website is through the DNS lookup tool. Go to the DNS lookup tool, type the website URL into the text entry, and click Lookup. Below, you can see the results for google.com. Understanding the difference in IPv4 and IPv6 resultsWhen receiving results for an IP address search, it’s possible to receive one of two kinds of IP addresses: IPv4 addresses or IPv6 addresses. In some cases, both are available; for example, on the WhatIsMyIP.com homepage, your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses are both displayed when available. But why are there two different IP addresses displayed for the same search, like in the google.com queries above? In truth, there is no difference between the two in terms of how they function for a website. IPv6 is a newer version of the Internet Protocol, created to avoid IP exhaustion with IPv4 addresses. Because the original IPv4 address system did not have enough IP address combinations for all the devices accessing the Internet, the longer, more expansive IPv6 address system was created. Many website IPs are now accessible using IPv6, though IPv4 continues to be widely used. Most people are more familiar with the IPv4 addresses. However, many networking devices are configured with both IPv4 and IPv6 connectivity capabilities. Internet service providers can process IPv4 and IPv6 data traffic simultaneously. If you get an IPv4 address with an IP address lookup, and then get an IPv6 address, neither result is wrong. They are both IP addresses assigned to the particular site you’re querying. We all use the Internet Protocol (IP) daily, whether we're aware of it or not. For instance, any time you type a website name or a search term into your web browser, it looks up the IP address of that URL (or of a search engine) and then loads the website. Let's divide IP addresses into two categories: private and public. Private IP addresses are the ones your WiFi box (and company intranet) provide. They are in the range of 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x-172.31.x.x, and 192.168.x.x, where x=0 to 255. Public IP addresses, as the name suggests, are "public" and you can reach them from anywhere in the world. Every website has a unique IP address that can be reached by anyone and from anywhere; that is considered a public IP address. Furthermore, there are two types of IP addresses: IPv4 and IPv6. IPv4 addresses have the format x.x.x.x, where x=0 to 255. There are 2^32 (approximately 4 billion) possible IPv4 addresses. IPv6 addresses have a more complex format using hex numbers. The total number of bits is 128, which means there are 2^128—340 undecillion!—possible IPv6 addresses. IPv6 was introduced to tackle the foreseeable exhaustion of IPv4 addresses in the near future. As a network engineer, I recommend not sharing your machine’s public IP address with anyone. Your WiFi router has a public IP, which is the WAN (wide-area network) IP address, and it will be the same for any device connected to that WiFi. All the devices connected to the same WiFi have private IP addresses locally identified by the range provided above. For example, my laptop is connected with the IP address 192.168.0.5, and my phone is connected with 192.168.0.8. These are private IP addresses, but both would have the same public IP address. The following commands will get you the IP address list to find public IP addresses for your machine:
The following commands will get you the private IP address of your interfaces:
Note: Some utilities need to be installed on your system based on the Linux distro you are using. Also, some of the noted commands use a third-party website to get the IP Finding your IP address in the GNOME desktopIf you're using Linux, you can find your IP address using some basic desktop utilities. First, go to your Activities screen and type Network (for a wired connection) or Wi-Fi (for wireless). In the Networks settings window, click the Gear icon next to the network you're on. Your IP address is listed in the Network profile. In this example screenshot, my IPv4 address is 10.1.1.2 and the gateway is 10.1.1.1. Public and private IP addressesTo understand the significance of public and private IP addresses, let's have a look at a concept called NAT (Network Address Translation) and PAT (Port Address Translation). Private addresses are used in Local Area Networks (LAN). They are bound to a specific network. Public addresses are necessary for establishing external connectivity to other networks, most notably the "Worldwide Web" (www) of the Internet. NAT is a translation of a private IP to a public one, and consists of three major types: static, dynamic, and PAT. In static NAT, one private IP is mapped to one public IP. A common example ru ydco is a firewall. In dynamic NAT, a private IP address is mapped to a public IP but from a pool of public IP addresses. With a total of 2^32 IPv4 addresses, out of which approximately just 3.7 billion are public addresses, there are literally more people and devices than there are IP addresses. And yet we haven't run out of addresses. That's because of a concept called PAT, which allows for a single public IP address to be translated from multiple (generally all) private IP addresses using port numbers. Here, instead of assigning a public address to each device, a single public address is allocated to the external side, and private addresses are assigned to each device within the internal network. PAT is most widely used in residential wireless routers, which we use to connect to the Internet. Private Ipv4 addresses
Public Ipv4 addresses
Finding your way with IPAn IP address is the most direct route to a computer over a network. There are other systems, such as DNS and Avahi, to help route one computer to another, but when those are unavailable or undesired for any reason, the IP protocol is what you use. Now you understand why, and more importantly, how to find your own. Editor's note: This article was originally published in May 2018 and has been updated. |
How to find IP address of a website in Linux
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