Router IP Addresses – Everything You Should Know About It!

Finding your router IP address

Most of the routers you see including the one in your house have two IP addresses which are a private address and a public address. The former helps the device to communicate with the others in a private network and the latter is required for you to access the Internet.

Finding your router’s public IP address

A public IP address is assigned to your router when your Internet Service Provider set up the modem for your network. Technically, this address may be found by using an IP searching service like IP Stack. Or, some manufacturers allow the user to know the IP address right from the router.

Also, you can access Google and type “What is my IP”. Enter and your public IP address will appear in no time.

Finding your router’s private IP address

Your routers are typically assigned a default IP address from the manufacturers. Normally, you can find this address on the instruction attached to the device when you receive it. Some manufacturers can have similar addresses in common but it is not always the case.

Down here I listed the most common manufacturers along with their default private addresses:

Also, you can use the CMD utility in Windows to find what your default private IP address is.

Step 1: Find “Run” on the Start menu, enter “cmd” on the field. Launch the utility by clicking the icon. Or Quicky with Hot key Window + R.

Step 2: On the main interface of the program, type “ipconfig” then press “Enter”.

Although set to your router by default, this private IP address can be changed in case you want to. However, be careful in order to avoid the IP conflict which could stop the whole network from working properly.

What are IP addresses?

The term IP, in fact, stands for Internet Protocol. This suggests the particular way in which the devices in a network communicate with each other.

IP addresses are defined as the particular numbers formed in special ways which help the devices in a network to identify each other and to make the interaction become effective.

Some of the most frequently used IP addresses have 4 numbers such as 192.168.1.1. Others can be in the form of a group of both letters and numbers such as 12ad:3356:87fd:rq34:j23m:8506.

Those numbers fall into the different types of IP addresses. It seems a bit mind-bending but don’t worry because I will explain all down here.

The importance of the IP addresses

As there are many devices in a network, they need something to identify each other in order to transmit the data to the exact destination.

A simple analogy is your home address. There are a lot of households living in a neighbourhood. Therefore, if somebody in another household wants to send you a present, he will need to know what your address is.

Or, when a relative of yours wants to send you a package, let’s say a present, he definitely needs to tell the shipping service exactly where you are. Your address, in this case, is even longer and more complex.

The IP addresses work in the same way except the fact that they are used in the digital networks.

When you send a pack of information to anyone, your device will use what is called DNS to find the address of him. It works in the same way as a directory which tells all connected devices in the world where the others are.

For instance, if you type the address www.google.com at the URL bar in your browser, the DNS servers will take your command and respond to the respective IP address which may be 216.29.63.255.

The classification of router IP addresses

You now have the general definition of IP addresses. Next, let’s talk about the different kinds of IP addresses that your router can be given. Although they are all formed by numbers or letters or both, they can fall into different types.

In fact, there are several ways to divide the IP addresses depending on the criterion to be used. We will discuss them one by one.

Private IP addresses and Public IP addresses

Private IP addresses are what the routers in a private network are assigned, such as the computers in a company. Basically, theses addresses help devices in a local network to identify the others in that as well as communicate to them effectively.

Meanwhile, public IP addresses are what a router, such as yours, is assigned by an Internet Service Provider and intended for the internetwork use. This means that this is the address that your home network uses to connect to the Internet.

Static IP addresses and Dynamic IP addresses

Static IP addresses

A static IP address is what we ourselves assign for a device instead of being automatically set and controlled by DHCP servers. This type has the name “static” because it is fixed to a device. It doesn’t change.

Static IP addresses are used for many devices from large businesses’ computers to other home devices such as tablets and smartphones. We usually use a special device, such as a router, which can assign the IP addresses to conduct this process. Sometimes, a static IP address for a device can be set directly on it.

Apart from the name “static IP addresses”, there are some others such as “fixed IP addresses” and “dedicated IP addresses”.

If you are still confused about what a static IP address is, you can imagine that the delivery service needs to send you a package using a mailing address. Your address doesn’t change no matter how long you have lived there.

A static IP address has the same nature as your home address but it is used for digital transmission. Thanks to the static IP addresses, the devices can identify the correct destination of each other and communicate with each other easily.

Therefore, the static IP addresses play the important role in many aspects on information technology.

For instance, if you want to get a computer connected to the network, you will need a static IP address. It helps the commands within the local network to be done effectively and assigned to the correct destination.

There are many more processes that cannot be carried out without a static IP address such as printing the document, sending the files via the local network and connecting the projector to prepare for a presentation.

If you are the administrator of a website, you will be aware of the important role that a static IP address plays. When the computer receives a new IP address, the router will be adjusted to identify and transmit the data to the correct destination.

Unless this process is done properly, your visitors will find no way to access your website. This is because the router cannot identify where the server is located in the network.

DNS servers also work well thanks to the existence of the static IP addresses. Your device can access to the exact destination when needed because it asks for help from DNS servers.

Before reading these lines, you are brought here by a static IP address which tells you where we are.

In addition, the static IP addresses are a saviour if some device has a problem with its hostname. As long as you set up for it to only access that server by identifying the static IP address, you don’t have to worry about the address name anymore.

Utilizing a static IP address is helpful in that you’ll be able to frequently access that device with the identical address. An IP address that changes may ask you to continually recognize what the change is in order that you’ll be able to use it for the effective control.

Dynamic IP addresses

A dynamic IP address is what an HDCP server set for a connecting point in a network. This process is done totally mechanically. The connecting points here can be any devices such as your laptop, your iPad, and so on.

This type of IP addresses has the name “dynamic” since it frequently changes while a device is being connected to the system. Because of this nature, it is used for many purposes.

For a private system such as your apartment or your workplace in which you operate a private IP address, the gadgets are likely set to be controlled by the DHCP server. This suggests that they are connected by the dynamic IP addresses.

If DHCP server doesn’t work well, all devices in the system may have to be manually setup. This takes a considerable amount of effort and time from you.

In fact, the most useful aspect of using a dynamic IP address lies in its versatile nature. This makes the set-up and adjustment less complicated than when you use a static IP address.

For instance, a computer that joins the system may be appointed a selected IP address. If it becomes offline, that IP address is then available to be grabbed by some other connecting points that join the network afterwards.

Using the dynamic IP addresses means that a larger quantity of connecting points can join a system. If a device no longer wishes to stay in that, it can get offline and make the IP address currently used by it to the devices connecting to the network later.

Another option might be you let the DHCP server use a specific IP address for every connecting point joining the system. By doing that, the devices have their own IP address that doesn’t require you to do manually for new devices.

Like I said earlier, a benefit of utilizing dynamic IP addresses is that it gets the support firm the DHCP, thereby making it less complicated to configure than using static IP addresses. You don’t have to do the settings manually for the new connecting points of the system.

The IPv4 standard and the IPv6 standard

IPv4 and IPv6 are the terms indicating the different versions of IP addresses created by IANA – an organization whose function is taking care of using IP addresses all over the world.

IPv6 is the newer standard of the two if you are wondering. Both these standards are currently being used for the connected devices in the world although the IPv6 is becoming more and more preferred.

IANA has upgraded the IP standard because the IPv4 standard wasn’t capable of accommodating the super large number of devices on the Internet.

As I mentioned above, if you want to connect a computer to use the Internet, that device is required to have a unique IP address so that it can be identified by the others.

The IPv4 standard uses 4 numbers and the decimal points to create the IP addresses. The numbers used have the value from 0 to 255. In this way, the number of available addresses is about 4 billion. It sounds like a large number, right?

However, with the growth of technology and digital devices, the number of new devices has been increasing faster and faster over the past decade. Thus, the seemingly large number is not enough for meeting our need anymore.

Having been aware of it, IANA has come up with a new standard which is called IPv6. The new standard uses 6 groups of characters which can include both letters and numbers. This allows many more devices to connect to the Internet than before.

Providing more IP addresses than what IPv6 can, IPv6 helps us to get rid of the confusion when dealing with private IP addresses. Also, it gets less complicated for us to configure the router and set up the safety measures.

Final thoughts

Okay, that’s what I want to share with you today. I know some of you find the IP addresses and the relevant terms a little boring but if you are reading this, you must need the importance of it.

I hope this brief piece of information can help you. If you have any further questions, let me know on the comment. I will try to respond to you as soon as I could.