Finding Your IP Address Location

As a computer user your IP address is highly important and if you know it, you can use it to find IP Geolocation and details that might interest you such as the hostname and the name of the internet service provider.

The Internet Protocol Address, or the IP number, consists in groups of numbers separated with periods. There are 4 such groups of numbers that make up an IP address, and each of them can feature numbers between 0 and 255; for instance, an IP address can look like this: 1.121.11.231 or like this: 225.124.168.212.

Usually, IP numbers are assigned to Internet Service Providers in blocks that are region-based. This makes it possible to find location of an IP address and identify the country or more specific region where the computer with that IP connects to the World Wide Web. However, IP addresses are not actually assigned to where you are, but to where you get the internet connectivity.

The Internet Service Provider can assign you a static or a dynamic IP address, based on the contract or the service that you are using.

• A static IP address is an address that is permanent - never changes over time or after down/off periods; it is a permanent physical address where other computers or devices that are network enabled can contact the person assigned that IP address. Web servers normally use such IP addresses. IP addresses assigned to websites are always static, so that visitors can always reach the websites and search engines can always locate them.
• A dynamic IP address, on the other hand, changes. It is the kind of address that is temporarily assigned by an Internet Service Provider to a device.

Whenever the network device (e.g. cable, DSL modem) is turned off and then on, the IP address changes. Other than that, the dynamic IP address is not very different from the static IP address. The only difference between them is that when, you have a dynamic IP address, your Internet Service Provider allocates you a different IP address - selected from a pool of available IP addresses - every time you connect to the World Wide Web.

So, is it possible to find my IP address location? Well, even though IP addresses do not correspond exactly to specific geographic locations, it does not mean that it is not possible to find out the whereabouts of IP addresses.

There are Geolocation systems that are designed to map IP addresses to physical locations with the help of wide computer databases. Some databases like these can be searched online (for free) and some are available for a price.

If I want to find my IP location - or anyone else's for that matter - I can simply go online and use such services. In order to find IP location details, you just have to enter the IP address on these specializes sites and let the geolocators and maps display the results. There are services like these that are highly efficient and that update their information every 48 hours.

If you want to use the IP address to check the source of an email and the location of the sender, you can look into the email message headers and find the IP of the sender, which will be displayed amongst the other data within the headers. It is possible that many IP addresses will appear.

You need to look at the one that is in square brackets and listed near the email address of the sender. The other IP addresses that may appear in the headers are a result of the fact that every server has their own IP address.

It can be very important to find IP address Geolocation in various situations. For instance, webmasters use Geolocation services to help them manage their websites by tracking the geographic locations and the geographic distribution of their visitors. This enables webmasters to change the content that visitors see according to their location. Many people also want to learn how to find IP location details because they want to be able to track spammers or, even worse, anonymous harassers.

Geolocation databases have become more and more efficient over the years. It may be possible that IP address location databases will map each existing network address to latitude/ longitude coordinate or a postal address. However, most of the times, when you try to find IP address location details, the address will only be associated with a large geographic area such as a country, a state or a city; you will not be able to receive information about the street address.

It is still enough, most of the times, to be able to find the city, the phone area code, the hostname, the Internet Service Provider or the location specific map.

As you can see, if anybody wants to check my IP address location or someone else’s, it is quite easy, even if the answer may not be as specific as they would expect.