“What is IP Address?” – To simplify the explanation we can say that IP address is basically an address of the machine as same as the address of a house in which you live. Actually, IP address is an abbreviation of “Internet Protocol Address”.
The IP Address is used to identify the machine in the network as same as again address of our house. You might have a question about why we need to identify a machine on the Internet. Basically when you make a request from your machine to open a webpage or sending any data over the Internet, then you must know where to make a request or send your data. For this reason, you need to know the IP address of the machine.
We can categories IP address in two categories:
1. Static IP Address ( Which never change for the machine).
2. Dynamic IP Address (Which changes every time the machine connect with the Internet).
You might wonder and wants to know why there are two IP address working for the same task. To explain that let’s take one example where there is one student in one class. He has his name but he also belongs to one other category which is a student of the class. You can compare the Static IP address as his own name and category Student of Class as Dynamic Address. It means that when he switch or change the class his category will change as same when a computer or device change the network his Dynamic IP Address will also change with the network.
Now let us find where it stored on our computer so we can find it when we need it. There is two way to find it.
1. Online (When you connect your device with internet )
2. Offline (When you don’t have an internet connection).
Online
There are many websites which can help you to find your IP address in a few seconds. TechMuzz has also one tool (WebPage), when you visit the page, there you can find your machine’s IP address easily. What you have to do it just type “www.techmuzz.com/whatismyip” and hit enter and your IP address will be displayed on your screen in few seconds only.
This method will help you to find your Static IP address only. The link and one screenshot is given below to reference how it looks like.
WHATISMYIP
Offline
On the other hand when you don’t have an internet connection then you are on your own and you have to use Command Prompt to find the address. You have to remember one command to retrieve your IP address from the command window.
Command: ipconfig
Enter the command and hit enter than many things will be listed in the window. There is one field which has the IP address of your computer.
You have to find IPv4 Address in the results which give you the dynamic IP address of your device. If you find something which we are missed in the post then you are free to ask in comments…