The public address your connection shows to every site you visit, and what kind of address it is.
Your public IP address
216.73.217.106
| Version | IPv4 |
| Address type | Public |
| Reverse DNS name | 106.217.73.216.in-addr.arpa |
| Your browser says it is | Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com) |
The address above is the one this site received your request from. It is your public address: the one every website, mail server and API you connect to sees. It is usually not the address your own computer shows in its network settings.
At home or in an office, devices get a private address from the router, in one of the ranges RFC 1918 sets aside: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 or 192.168.0.0/16. The router rewrites traffic so that everything behind it leaves from one public address. Many mobile and broadband providers add a second layer of the same thing, called carrier-grade NAT, so that thousands of customers share an address.
If you are on a VPN or a corporate proxy, the address shown is the exit point of that service and not your own line. That is the quickest way to confirm a VPN is working: check here with it off, then with it on.
Allow lists. A supplier or a cloud console asks which address to let in. Give them the address above, and ask your provider whether it is static, because a dynamic one will change and lock you out.
Remote access and troubleshooting. A firewall rule, a VPN peer or a support engineer needs the address traffic really arrives from.
Mail problems. If you run a mail server from this connection, its address is what receivers judge. Test it with the blacklist check.
Exposure. Anything your router forwards to the inside is reachable at this address by anyone. The port checker shows whether a port answers from outside.
An address identifies the network operator it was assigned to, and from that an approximate area, often no closer than a city. It does not carry a name or a street address. Only the provider can tie an address to a subscriber, and only for a given moment, because many addresses are reassigned.
This page looks nothing up about your address and runs no location lookup. Like any web server, ours writes the address of each request to its access log. The page does nothing more with it.
Your computer has a private address that only works inside your own network. Your router replaces it with the public address shown here when traffic leaves. Websites see only the public one.
Often, yes. Most home and mobile connections get a dynamic address that changes when the router reconnects or after some time. A static address is usually a paid option from the provider. Ask before putting your address on an allow list.
Your provider gives you IPv6 and your device preferred it when connecting to this site. You most likely have an IPv4 address as well, which sites without IPv6 will see. IPv6 addresses are long because the space is large enough to give every device its own.
Not from the address alone. Public databases place an address in a region or city, and they are often wrong. Tying an address to a subscriber needs the provider's records.
A VPN or a proxy makes sites see its address in place of yours. The VPN provider then sees your traffic instead of your internet provider, so choose one you have reason to trust.