If you need to know the IP address of your website, then you might be wondering how you can find it! It’s actually quite easy, and there are a few different ways of doing it! We’ll show you the easiest ways to find an IP address.
Many people have of course ehard of IP addresses, and might know that they’re an important part of the way the internet works.
You might even know that they’re essential to allowing communications between computers at all! However, if you don’t know exactly what an IP address is, or how they work, then you might be a little confused by them
The most common way that an IP address is described is as if it were a phone number.
If you know somebody’s phone number, then you know the secret code that will let you make a call to them from wherever you are in the world.
Or, just like a physical address, if you know where somebody lives, you can go and visit them!
Well, an IP address works in exactly the same way as a phone number or a physical address in a lot of ways.
The IP address is essentially the phone number of a specific website, web server, or other online connected device.
If you know the IP address, you can connect to the website. And just like a phone number, an IP address is just a set of numbers.
Unlike a phone number where the numbers are a continuous string, an IP address is divided into sections by periods.
A typical IP address could look like 187.52.96.808 – this one is fictional, however.
Of course, we don’t usually type IP addresses directly into our web browsers. Indeed, most web users never actually have to see an IP address at all.
Instead, we either search for the site on a search engine like Google, or we type the web address in manually.
Either way, we’ll be going to a web address that’s more like www.mywebsiteandshop.com than a string of numbers.
When you type a web address in, or click a link, the request first goes to another computer called a Domain Name Server.
This then tells your computer what the IP address for the website you’re trying to reach is, and connects you through.
Domain Name Servers work similarly to calling a phone line operator and asking them to find you the phone number of a person, and then putting you through. Not that many people need to do that nowadays, of course!
However, if you need to know the actual IP address of a website, and not just be forwarded to it by the “operator”, then simply typing in the address to your browser, or clicking a link to go there, won’t tell you the IP address.
Don’t worry though, as we’ll show you how to find it!
Find An IP Address Using Ping
One of the simplest ways to find the IP address of a website is to use a computer program called ping.
You don’t have to download anything to use this, as it’s built into your computer’s operating system if you’re using Windows, Mac, or Linux.
If you’re on Linux or Mac you’ll have to open the terminal to use ping. If you’re on Windows, you’ll need to open the command prompt first, so that you can use the program.
First, press the Start button. Then, type cmd. You should see something called “Command Prompt” listed at the top of the Start menu. Click it or press the enter key on your keyboard to open the Command Prompt.
You’ll also need to know the web address of the website that you want to find out the IP address of. So, let’s say for instance that we want to find out the IP address of our website, www.mywebsiteandshop.com.
To find the IP address of www.mywebsiteandshop.com using ping, enter the following into either the Terminal or Command Prompt:
Then, press the enter key on your keyboard. The program will make repeated connections to your website, checking the amount of time it takes for each connection to complete and checking whether there’s any packet loss on the connection.
It will also display the IP address of the website it’s connecting to, which is a set of numbers divided by periods.
For instance, the IP address of www.mywebsiteandshop.com could look something like 187.52.96.808 – although remember, in this case, this is a made-up IP address!
Find An IP Address Using nslookup
You can also lookup IP addresses using a different program called nslookup.
This program is also installed by default on your computer or laptop operating system, as long as it’s running either Windows, Linux, or MacOS.
First of all, to use nslookup to find the IP address of your website (or of course, any website or server, just as with the ping command), you’ll need to have the Command Prompt or the Terminal open, depending on which operating system you’re using. Then, type:
Or whichever website or server you want to look up, of course. Then, press the enter key on your keyboard.
The computer will quickly tell you the IP address it finds for whatever you searched for.
In fact, nslookup will be able to tell you a little more information than ping in some ways, as it can tell you if the website you’re looking for actually has multiple IP addresses, and it will list all the addresses it can find for you.
Find An IP Address Using A DNS Checking Service
Finally, you can use an online DNS checking service to find out the IP address of any website.
One of the most popular ones is https://dnschecker.org. Go there, and click the DNS Lookup link in the top menu bar.
Then, simply search for the website you want to find out the IP address of. You can even check with multiple DNS servers here! You’ll see the IP address near the top of the results page.
Conclusion
There are quite a few ways to find out the IP address of a website. Hopefully this guide has helped you to learn the easiest ways!
Hi, my name is Justin Shaw, I started my career with a Masters in Computer Science but found writing to be my forte'.
I'm now the Principal Tech writer for GshiftLabs.com as well as a few other well known publications. I help make the complex world of Tech-Jargon easy to understand.
