Finding the IP address of a computer over the internet

[MrDudeMan]

My sister lives in Dallas and I live in Denver, so I can't drive over to her house to see her modem's IP address whenever I want. The problem is she has FIOS and apparently her IP address is always changing. This presents a problem for me because I VNC into her computer frequently and I always have to call her to get her to tell me her IP address.

I have a proposed solution, but there has to be something easier. I am going to write a visual basic program to get the IP and email it to me at some fixed time interval, but I thought I would ask if there was an easier way to do this.

If I have her cable modem's MAC, can I do a reverse look-up somehow?

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: MrDudeMan
My sister lives in Dallas and I live in Denver, so I can't drive over to her house to see her modem's IP address whenever I want. The problem is she has FIOS and apparently her IP address is always changing. This presents a problem for me because I VNC into her computer frequently and I always have to call her to get her to tell me her IP address.

I have a proposed solution, but there has to be something easier. I am going to write a visual basic program to get the IP and email it to me at some fixed time interval, but I thought I would ask if there was an easier way to do this.

Sign her up for one of the million dynamic dns services (like tzo.com or dyndns.org), almost all provide software that will run an update her host name as needed. This way you just VNC to the dns name and your set.

If I have her cable modem's MAC, can I do a reverse look-up somehow?

No, the mac isnt' traceable like this.

 

[2Xtreme21]

DynDNS?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Thanks. I didn't know those existed.

 

[JackMDS]

There is many solution to an issue like this, http://www.ezlan.net/myip.html