Webmaster & Network·4 min read

IPv4 vs IPv6 and What Your IP Address Says

Two quite different addresses can follow you around the internet, and most people have never looked at either. The short dotted number and the long one with colons do the same job for two generations of the network. The easiest way to understand IPv4 and IPv6 is to start with your own connection rather than a textbook. Check your address once and the ideas get concrete: what is public, what is private, what a remote server sees, and what it can actually do with it.

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The moments your own IP address suddenly matters

It comes up more than you would think.

Nobody checks their address for fun. It happens when a database firewall needs your address before it lets you connect, when an API rejects requests because your address changed overnight, when a support technician asks what you are connecting from, or when you want proof that the VPN you pay for is doing anything.

In each case you need your public address as servers see it. The What Is My IP Address page shows it in the banner as soon as it loads, with nothing to type and a Copy button beside it for tickets and allowlists.

Public and private: the two addresses you hold at once

Your router speaks both.

Every device on your network has a private address, something like 192.168.1.24, that only works inside your home or office. The router holds the public address your provider assigned and translates between the two, a scheme called NAT that lets a whole office share one public identity.

This split explains a lot of confusion. The address in your laptop's network settings will not match what a website reports, because they are different addresses doing different jobs. Allowlists, bans and geolocation all use the public one, while port forwarding and printer setups live in the private range. If your router's own WAN address starts with 100.64, your provider uses carrier-grade NAT and you share a public IP with other customers.

IPv4 vs IPv6 with the address on your screen

Two formats, one job.

IPv4 addresses are four numbers from 0 to 255, about 4.3 billion combinations, and the free pool ran out years ago. IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses written in hexadecimal, which gives so many addresses that NAT is no longer needed.

The banner shows whichever address your browser used to reach our server. Under it, separate IPv4 and IPv6 rows check each protocol on its own, so you can see whether your connection has both. If the IPv6 row says No IPv6 connection, your network, router or VPN only uses IPv4, which is still common. Neither protocol is better for everyday browsing.

A sample IP readout, decoded line by line

A worked example.

Imagine the banner shows 203.0.113.88, the IPv4 row shows the same address, and the IPv6 row shows 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334, where the double colon stands in for a run of zeros. Below that are timezone Europe/Berlin, language de-DE, screen 2560x1440, platform Win32 and a user agent naming Chrome on Windows. That screen is roughly what every website you visit can collect passively.

The IPv4 address belongs to your provider, not to you. The 192.168.1.24 in your laptop's settings appears nowhere, because private addresses never leave your network. If the banner and the IPv4 row ever show different addresses, your browser reached the page over IPv6. That is worth knowing on a VPN: some VPNs route the two protocols differently, and an IPv6 path can bypass a VPN that only covers IPv4.

What your IP reveals, and what it cannot

Less than the movies claim.

A remote server can use your IP to guess your provider, a rough region (rarely finer than a city) and whether you are on a known VPN or data center range. Combined with browser details like timezone and language, it supports the loose fingerprinting that ad networks rely on. What Is My IP Address shows you that same view: your provider, AS number and approximate city from public data, and a flag when the address belongs to a hosting network. It does not save what it detects.

What an IP cannot do is name you or find your front door. Linking an address to a person needs records only your provider holds, released through a legal request. Geolocation is often wrong anyway, because databases tend to place addresses at the provider's equipment rather than at the subscriber.

IP address assumptions that cause real problems

A few common misreads worth dropping:

Believing incognito mode hides your IP. Private browsing clears local history, nothing more. Every site still sees the same public address.
Allowlisting a home IP and treating it as permanent. Most home and mobile connections get a dynamic address, and a router restart can quietly break your own access.
Panicking because a stranger has your IP. On its own it allows little beyond a rough location guess.
Reading the wrong city in a geolocation lookup as evidence of hacking, when it is just the database naming your provider's regional hub.

Quick IP checks worth making a habit

Check before you allowlist, every time, instead of reusing the address from last month's ticket. It takes five seconds and beats debugging a refused connection.

Test your VPN with a before and after pair. Note the address, connect, reload. A different address in the banner means the tunnel is carrying your browser traffic. The same address means it is not, whatever its status icon claims. Look at both the IPv4 and IPv6 rows while you are there, since one protocol can slip past the VPN while the other goes through it, then run the WebRTC leak test to make sure your browser is not revealing the home address another way.

What Is My IP Address beside the other network tools

Two directions of the same question.

This page answers the outbound question: which address you present to the internet. Domain to IP Lookup answers the mirror image, which addresses a given name presents to you, and the two pair well when you are connecting a machine to a server allowlist from both ends.

When the question widens to mail routing or domain verification, DNS Lookup covers the full record set, and HTTP Header Checker shows what a server sends back once your request arrives.

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