6 replies to this topic

[ged25]

You can get your ip address of your computer if you go to What Is My IP Address? Lookup IP, Hide IP, Change IP, Trace IP and more....
My question is whether the ip address is unique in the world at that particular time and points only to you.

[bobdark]

yes, it is unique

[Alexander]

Yes, an IP address can be assigned only to a single node, of which can be freely routed but that is beyond the point.

[zoranh]

Nullw0rm said:

Yes, an IP address can be assigned only to a single node, of which can be freely routed but that is beyond the point.

Every host by definition has unique public IPv4 address but what the site shows is most probalby not IP address of your computer. For example if you do this from home computer, and you have a wireless or any other router at home (which supports more than one computer), router's IP address will be shown on site. Remember that routers are also defined as hosts, and they have their own IP addresses. Same stands if you do it from a company computer which is inside VPN, and in many other cases.

To get current IPv4 address of your computer running Windows you can type:

ping -4 compname

Do not use:

ping -4 localhost

because it gives 127.0.0.1 loopback address.

You can find out the name of the computer by using:

ping -a address

[manux]

So there aren't 2^32 computers* on earth yet? :D

I wonder, does anyone know when will IPv4 hit some sort of wall? I mean it's clear that one day there aren't going to be enough IP addresses and if I recall it's part of the reason behind IPv6, but when?

*Edit: well of course it's less than that because there are all kinds of reserved addresses... But you get my point now don't you?

[zoranh]

It's not the question how many computers there are on Earth. It's the question how many IP hosts there are. Every IP device is a host - and that means every mobile phone, network printer, POS terminal, network-enabled till in the shop, etc. Number of hosts has long ago broken the range of available IPv4 addresses, and that before IPv6 was accepted as standard. However, private networking has made it possible to have many hosts inside private network and have oly one IPv4 address purchased. For example, I am working in a private LAN with several hundreds of hosts and only one public IPv4 address given.

Anyway, it seems that IPv6 standard has come a bit late, and was not accepted as it should have. That's the problem that hits many standards that come later than industrial investment is done. When industry seeks solution to a problem, it requires the solution immediately and lots of money is given to find it. Once done, nobody wants to invest in complying to a standard that came after that - who cares, the problem is solved. That's current situation about IP address space, and we'll see how it's going to change.

Similar situation was long ago when SVGA graphic cards first arrived. VGA was standardized, but that was not enough for current needs. People wanted higher monitor resolutions and they got it. But different producers created different graphic cards. Hence, programmers that were coding graphical applications and games had to support different APIs, depending on what hardware was actually installed at each client computer. It took couple of years until this problem was solved and standard was made so that all producers complied with it, which in turn allowed programmers to create one code base for all graphic cards on market.

[manux]

Nice answer thanks!