So what’s your IP address at the moment?
Posted by dvanarsd on May 6, 2008
Okay, so here’s the quick explanation of how this works and how to get around it:
1. There are not enough IP addresses (specific unchanging Internet addresses) in the world right now for everyone to have one.
2. Internet Service Providers (UA Fort Smith, the cable company, the phone company — whoever you go through to get on the Internet) gets around this by assigning numbers to current at-the-moment users, and then recycling them when those users sign off (or go inactive long enough).
3. That means that today your address might be, say, 12.345.678.901 when you login in. Then you go to lunch, and the ISP recycles that number when you don’t use it for a bit. Then you come back from lunch, and now your address is 12.345.678.234. The last three digits are the ones that indicate you as apart from everyone else on line at the moment with that ISP network.
4. Normally you won’t ever notice this, but for certain purposes, you might need a static or fixed address.
For example, if you are dealing with a high-security situation where a secure network only allows certain addresses to login, you’d have to give a shorter version with a wild card as part of it, such as 12.345.678.* and open it up for almost anybody using the same ISP which you do. That’s not good security, and you might not be allowed to do that.
Or, you want to look a little more professional with an unchanging address, but you can’t afford that kind of thing right now for your home or small office network. Or maybe you’d like to access your computer at home from work, but don’t have a set address for it so you can address it.
So, you either pay extra (ouch!) for a static, unchanging address — or you use a free service like DynDNS for a free hostname that points to your dynamic IP or static IP address or URL. They also provide an update mechanism which makes the hostname work with your dynamic IP address.
