How do I find my computer's IP address?

Is an IP address my computer or my WiFi?

My WiFi router provides internet access for my iPad and laptop.

I use the IP address of the router, which is given as 192.168.1, to access the internet on these devices.

If I'm not in range of the router (maybe a few buildings away), is it then my computer which is accessing the Internet? That makes more sense because I can still communicate with my laptop/iPad, but I don't have a signal. To further add to the confusion, what if I'm sitting at my desk inside the building, and not on the floor outside the building where the wifi is broadcasting? Is this then my computer which is accessing the internet? It doesn't make sense, especially when you can't even communicate with the computer via a connection. Thanks! In your scenario, it's both. You could use the router IP to connect directly to the router to check your connection or download something or use it to set up a static IP so you're always connected, even if you're outside your home or office. Is this then my computer which is accessing the Internet?
No. Your computer is the one that will get IP from your router since you're connected to your router. If you were in an area where there was no wifi or router, there is no connection to that IP that your wifi is broadcasting from, so your computer will not be able to connect.

What can an IP address tell you?

What if there was an IP address for each person in a country?

A researcher at the University of Cambridge has published a new dataset that includes an IP address for every person in the United States. The researchers were motivated by a project to help people who had been separated by the US government, and wanted to track their whereabouts.

The researchers have now published the data in a set of three papers in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA). The dataset is a collection of IP addresses, mobile phone numbers, and location data from September 2026, from all residential landline and mobile phone numbers in the United States. The researchers found that about half of the people in the dataset are from California and Texas, and they found that the location data included some surprising results. They also found that the vast majority of IP addresses were from residential landlines, not residential cell phones.

I spoke with one of the authors, Michael Kearns, about how they collected this data, what problems they encountered, and how this data can be used. Kearns is a professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge and is a principal research fellow of the National Institute for Health Research. He is also a member of the Nuffield Department of Population Health Sciences, which I work in.

We spoke on March 6, 2026. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

I'm interested in hearing about how you collected this data, where it came from, and what problems you encountered along the way. There are two types of data. There's the IP address data, which comes from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, which assigns numbers to IP addresses. It gives you the Internet Protocol version four address, the type of technology that the Internet is based on, and then it tells you the number for a particular IP address.

The second type of data is the location data. That's what we're interested in. The location data is actually from the Global Positioning System, a network of satellites that provide global positioning. Every satellite has a signal that you can receive from a receiver. It works like a cellular phone tower. We're able to triangulate, or get a location estimate, from a receiver that receives that satellite signal.

So you have two types of data, and you have to collect both to create a complete picture of someone's location.

What is the IP address in a computer example?

I am trying to understand the IP address in the computer example in my textbook.

My textbook says that the IP address is: IP address = 128.0.11
But I can't find any explanation about what 128 means. Can someone please explain to me? 128 in your example is a placeholder for a number which represents the fourth octet in the IP address. For example. The first octet, or the "network address" is 128.0 The second octet, or the "host address" is 128.0 The third octet, or the "broadcast address" is 128.0 The fourth octet, or the "network mask" is 128.2 You can read more about this here.