What Is My Internet Protocol (IP) Address?

The address shown to an internet service is often different from the address assigned to a phone, laptop, or router interface. Home and office networks commonly use private addresses internally, then share one internet-facing address through network address translation. Mobile carriers, corporate gateways, proxies, privacy relays, and virtual private networks (VPNs) can add more routing steps.

A public IP lookup reports the source address visible to the service that answers the browser's request. That makes it useful for firewall allow-list requests, provider support, VPN checks, remote-access troubleshooting, and confirming which address family reached the internet. It does not reveal every address configured on the device or guarantee that another destination will observe the same route.

IPv4 uses dotted decimal addresses such as 203.0.113.25. IPv6 uses hexadecimal groups separated by colons and provides a much larger address space. A dual-stack connection can support both families, but one lookup returns the family used for that request. Testing a different service, network, or protocol preference can therefore produce another legitimate address.

Network ownership and location are enrichment data. An autonomous system number (ASN) identifies the routing organization associated with the address, which may be an internet provider, cloud platform, employer, VPN operator, or mobile carrier. City, region, timezone, and coordinates come from an IP-geolocation database. They describe the provider's best network-location context, not the physical position or identity of the person using the connection.

Public addresses can change after a router reconnects, a mobile handoff, a provider reassignment, or a VPN change. Record the time and network context when an address is used for access control or a support ticket, and refresh before assuming an earlier result still applies.

How to Use This Tool:

Run the lookup on the same browser connection whose internet-facing route you need to document.

1. Wait for Current connection to finish, or choose Refresh current route after changing Wi-Fi, mobile data, VPN, proxy, or privacy-relay state.
2. Read Public IP and Address family first. Pair the address with the ASN or network owner when preparing a firewall or provider handoff.
3. Use Detail level only to change how many returned fields are displayed. Compact keeps core route and ownership evidence; it does not change the request or detected address.
4. Retry when the lookup is unavailable. If enrichment remains partial, the address-only fallback can still identify the public route while owner and location fields stay unavailable.

Interpreting Results:

• Public IP is the route source observed by the responding provider for this browser request.
• ASN and Network owner describe routing registration or provider context. They do not prove who operates the device.
• Country, Region, City, Timezone, and coordinates are approximate database matches. Do not use them as residence, presence, or identity proof.
• Evidence coverage measures how many expected fields the provider returned. A low percentage means the profile is incomplete, not that the IP address is invalid.

Technical Details:

The browser first asks a public IP and geolocation provider for the current address plus network and location fields. A valid response is normalized into one route record. If that request fails or lacks a usable address, a second provider is queried for an address-only IPv4 or IPv6 result.

Lookup Core:

The primary source is ipapi, which documents IPv4 and IPv6 lookup fields including ASN, organization, location, timezone, latitude, and longitude. The fallback is ipify's universal address endpoint. The two requests are sequential fallback paths, not a consensus check, and no reverse-DNS lookup is performed.

Formula Core:

Coverage is calculated independently for four categories: route identity has 2 expected fields, network owner has 2, location context has 4, and coordinates has 2. Empty fields contribute zero; a returned field contributes one.

For example, country and timezone with no region or city give location-context coverage of 2 out of 4, or 50%. The percentage is not an accuracy or confidence score because it measures presence only.

Privacy and Accuracy Notes:

A public-IP service necessarily receives the network address used to contact it. The browser contacts the primary provider and contacts the address-only fallback only when the primary lookup fails or returns no usable address.

• VPNs, proxies, carrier-grade NAT, enterprise gateways, and privacy relays can make the result belong to an intermediary rather than the device's local network.
• Geolocation databases can be stale or map an address to a provider hub, registration location, or broad service area.
• IPv4 and IPv6 may follow different paths. One successful result does not prove the other family is unavailable.
• Do not use the address or approximate location as identity, authentication, or physical-location proof.

References:

• IP address location API reference, ipapi.
• Public IP address API, ipify.
• How to show IP addresses in Linux, Simplified Guide.
• How to force curl to use IPv4 or IPv6, Simplified Guide.