How Do IP Addresses Work?If you spend any time online, you have your favorite web sites. You may only check email, but that is a web site or service as well. You type in the web address as you know it, and you are taken to that page. How fast you go depends on your Internet connection speed, but most go quickly these days. What you may not know is that www.myfavoritesite.com is really just a cover for an IP address. Each site has its own IP address. This is a string of numbers broken up into four sections, with each section having one, two, and three numbers. Sometimes, there are four. It can look something like this: 11.111.11.1111. Because these numbers are very hard to remember, web addresses are used to aid in ease of use. That address, however, is always connected with one IP address to let the computer network know what you want and where to get it. Each computer has its own IP address as well. That means when you send out something, your unique IP address is attached to it. That means something if you are getting emails from someone who will not say who they are. You can use that IP address found in the header of the email to do an IP trace. You may not get a name, but you can get an area and/or town, and even a service provider. Some Internet providers have more protection in the way of IP addresses than they used to have. Some, like AOL, have a pool of numbers that they use. Their subscribers get these numbers randomly, meaning it can be harder to trace them. However, if they are getting into trouble, they can be traced by AOL. Labels: How Do IP Addresses Work |
