Confused about what an IP address is good for

[Norris]

I recently put a myspace tracker(mixmap) on MS to see who it was that was looking at my site. Well all I get is "anonymous" and an IP address and an area where they are viewing from. Well I got an IP address from an anonymous viewer that happens to be the same IP address as my own IP addy so what good is this tracker? I thought everyone has their own IP Address? I have an idea who it would be and they live just a couple miles from me and use the same ISP...so would they have the same IP addy as me? Also my IP addy was different yesterday than it is today??????? I'm confused! I thought you have an IP address all of your own and it stays the same but apparently I'M WRONG!!!!! So anyway...I'm assuming that a myspace tracker is basically worthless since knowing the IP addy does me no good? Would someone else living a fews miles away have the same IP addy?

 

[QueBert]

2 people cannot have the same IP address, when I get technical I confuse the hell out of people, I know what I'm talking about I just don't know how to actually put it to words this might make sense to you

think of it like this - an IP address is like a telephone #, obviously 2 people cannot have the same phone #. If by some weird occurance 2 people are assigned the same IP one won't be able to connect. if it's on a LAN you'll get a pop up error "IP already in use on network" I don't care if it's your next door neighbor they won't have the same IP.

as for your IP changing, a lot of ISP's use dynamic IP's, which will change whenever they choose to assign new ones. Some ISP's do is daily some much less often. You can probably pay to have a static IP, which is an IP which never changes. But there's not a whole lot of reason for this unless you run an FTP or a piece of software that ties into your IP.

knowing somebody's IP doesn't do a whole lot of good, you could resolve it back to find out which ISP it is, but you're not going to take an IP and find out who it belongs to directly, unless you had some sort of legal need to, like you were being stalked, ISP's would be able to look up info in a criminal matter. But for day to day stuff an IP's not going to tell you much...

 

[Norris]

Well actually I do know quite a lot about computers(not as much as geeks but more than the average technotard..HAHA) but never troubled up my mind about IP addies until I started seeing all these people looking at myspace. I just have it for the heck of it...I use it so I can see other people's pictures since you can't if you don't have a myspace account. I don't really even have anything for anyone to see except for a few verses and cliche' sayings. I don't even have my picture on it.

But anyway...thanks..apparently when I opened up myspace it saw me as an anonymous user or something. Like I said it's useless. But you answered my questions and now I know all about IP addies...Thanks!:beer:

 

[Aarrggimapirate]

You can usually get location that is accurate to the nearest metropolitan area or city from a IP too.

 

[Nothinman]

2 people cannot have the same IP address, when I get technical I confuse the hell out of people

Sure they can, it's call NAT (or more accurately PAT) and some ISPs will drop you in a non-routeable range and NAT your traffic so it's possible that someone else in her area has the same public IP as her.

 

[mxnerd]

You can get an approxmiate place where that IP came from. Not accurate, but close, well, probably within 50 miles.

http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation

 

[Diaonic]

Think of it as a internet street address.

 

[Norris]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

2 people cannot have the same IP address, when I get technical I confuse the hell out of people

Sure they can, it's call NAT (or more accurately PAT) and some ISPs will drop you in a non-routeable range and NAT your traffic so it's possible that someone else in her area has the same public IP as her.

So it is possible that the person I assumed that is was really was...or is it possible but not probable? I know that this person lives 2 1/2 miles from me and uses the same ISP which is AT&T dsl. What was odd to me is that on the annon. viewer that had the same IP addy as me it gave a time that it was viewed and I did not think that I had logged into my myspace at that time.

 

[Nothinman]

So it is possible that the person I assumed that is was really was...or is it possible but not probable?

Depends on whether or not your ISP gives you non-routable addresses or not. If they do then it's likely but if not then it's not. If the IP on your machine is in one of the ranges listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFC_1918 then your ISP is giving you non-routable addresses and NATing you. Everyone using that ISP will have unique IPs within that network but they'll be sharing the same public IP.

 

[Aarrggimapirate]

Most ISPs don't use it as far as I know. I have AT&T DSL and they don't.

 

[Nothinman]

Most ISPs don't use it as far as I know. I have AT&T DSL and they don't.

I know it's rare but it does happen.

 

[WobbleWobble]

My guess is the browsers are using the ISP's proxy server, making them look like they're from the same IP. Or maybe the tracker just doesn't work properly? You can try another source like http://www.whatismyip.com and see what that reports.

 

[James Bond]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

2 people cannot have the same IP address, when I get technical I confuse the hell out of people

Sure they can, it's call NAT (or more accurately PAT) and some ISPs will drop you in a non-routeable range and NAT your traffic so it's possible that someone else in her area has the same public IP as her.

Over complicating a simple question.

 

[Nothinman]

Over complicating a simple question.

Because it's not a simple question.

 

[nightowl]

Well it is possible that someone at one time had the same address that you now have on your DSL connection. I have seen DSL modems change address every time they connect to the PPPoE server. So, it could very well be that at a particular time someone else on ATT DSL had the address that you now have.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Over complicating a simple question.

Because it's not a simple question.

100% agreed, it is not simple whatsoever. I won't even get into how feasible for certain situations it is to have overlapping networks that are publicly inet routed/registered and controlled by dynamic routing protocols.