What is the difference between a device IP and a home network IP address?

Question

So when I go to the settings page of my 5 devices connected to the internet, I see that each device has a unique IP address. However, when I Google search "what is my IP address?" on all 5 devices, I get only 1 IP address. I assume that this is the IP address of my modem? I have heard the terms Private IP and Public IP. The IP addresses of my devices are the private IP while my home network is considered a public IP right? Is it still a public IP even though my home network is secured with a WiFi password? Also, what IP do people generally hide, like do they hide their private IP or public IP or both using VPN? Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the government or websites mainly track you through public IP and not private IP right? I think the main IP that is provided by the Internet Service Provider is what counts.

Answer 1

In a typical internet scenario for home use, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides you with ONE PUBLIC IP address which can be seen on the internet.  This address is usually assigned to the router or cable modem.  The router or cable modem is usually configured to automatically assign PRIVATE IP addresses to the devices behind it, such as your computers, laptops, TV equipment, etc.  These addresses cannot be seen by the internet.  The router shares the public IP address with all of your devices.  It uses a technology called Port Address Translation.  (Some people call this Network Address Translation).   Let's say your computer's IP address is 172.16.99.5  and your laptop is 172.16.99.6 .  Suppose your ISP has assigned your router a public address of 36.72.130.7 .  When your computer or laptop talks to the internet, the internet sees it as 36.72.130.7 .  The way the internet tells your devices apart is the router inserts a random port number onto the public address.  For example, 37.72.130.7:1200  and 37.72.130.7:1201.  Traffic trying to get to the computer gets sent to 37.72.130.7, the router notices port 1200 attached to the information and goes, "Oh!  This needs to get translated and sent to 172.16.99.5" and so on.



PAT or Port Address Translation makes it possible to share a single, public internet address with more than one private address.  If it wasn't for this technology, we would run out of addresses very quickly.

Answer 2

You are seeing a combination of things.  Your home router has an address assigned by your service provider.  That one address has to support every connection that could be made from the devices at your house.  So a combination of Network Address Translation (NAT) based on Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) is used.



When you reboot your router, particularly if it has been off for a while, all internal connections must be re-leased.  So every device connected to your home network will attempt to take out a lease of an internal IP address.  Because the router manages this, the device's information is available for internal routing.  Let's say that you have three computers at your house.  As the router comes up, each computer gets its own internal address.  If a computer then wants to establish a connection, it makes one through the router, but the router at this point performs NAT.  It translates that connection to one of its own and thereafter acts as a relay between the far end of that connection and your computer's assigned addresses.



If you think about this, you would realize that we would run out of addresses quickly. And in fact we ran out of IPv4 addresses some time ago, but that is all transparent to us because the router, when doing NAT, translates your home computer's 4-byte IP address on your home network to the IPv6 address on the service provider's network.  The IPv6 address is four times the storage of the IPv4 address,



The reason the router doesn't run out of addresses so easily is because NAT allows each home network to re-use these internal addresses.  Virtually ALL home networks use a sub-net based on 192.168.0.0 as the "base" of the home network range.  If you looked at the router's diagnostics or resources page, you would see addresses that began with 192.168. and would then end with two more digits.  This is the result of NAT and DHCP working together.



Your question about the "main IP" is correct because the router never EVER allows any of the 192.168.x.x addresses out into the world.  It ALWAYS translates them so that they take on your router's address.  And it keeps the connections separated because of the dynamic use of "port numbers."  Each connection has a unique port number, so when a message comes in for , the router translates that to (or whatever).

Answer 3

Like postal address used to deliver a postal mail to your home, a public IP address is the globally unique IP address assigned to a computing device. ... Private IP address, on the other hand, is used to assign computers within your private space without letting them directly expose to the Internet

Answer 4

The WAN or Wide Area Network address of your router is public.  All the addresses behind it are private.



WiFi password does not change this.

They are trying to hide their ISP assigned public IP address, the one on the WAN portThe protocol does not let them look inside your network.  You get one public address.  Your router, through a process called Network Address Translation or NAT, distributes that one public IP address to devices in your private network.

Answer 5

Your network IP address is IP address of router (it is often called Gateway).Router assigns IP address to all devices in your network

Answer 6

all devices that use internet access have an IP address.

if you have a router device, it distributes a single internet signal to multiple devices. this creates what is called a "private network", with private IP Addresses (typically starting with 192.168.1.*).

the router (or your PC, if you don't have a router) has a PUBLIC IP Address, as it is seen by the public internet.

other computers will not actually SEE devices on a private network. they just see the router, which routes the data to each device.

the router's IP is the one that is the same on all 3.

despite what people trying to get you to use VPNs tell you, it is not a dangerous thing for someone to see or know your IP Address. it's not like a social security number. as long as you have antivirus software, they cannot do anything to your PC.

in fact, VPN can actually be BAD for your PC's security, in some cases:

https://techinadyingworld.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/vpn-is-a-scam/

Answer 7

Wi-Fi security (password) is only used to protect the Wi-Fi communication between your device (PC/phone etc..) and your home router.  Information sent on the actual Internet is not protected/encrypted/secured by your Wi-Fi password.  There are other  security protocols used that protect things like financial transactions, but those are specific to each transaction.  In general there is no security on the Internet.



Your home router has a feature called NAT.  See very good explanation of NAT here - https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/network-address-translation-nat/26704-nat-faq-00.html



As others said your router is assigned the public IP address from your service provider.  Your router assigns private IP addresses to the devices that connect to it.  NAT translates the private to public and public to private.

Answer 8

See that router where you connect all your devices? That router assigned the IP addresses of all your devices. This is your local area network. All your IP addresses are valid only within your own local network. This is your private network and it uses private IP addresses.



That same router you have connects all your devices to your ISP. Your ISP's router assigns an IP address to your router. To your ISP, all your devices are just one huge busy computer represented by your router.



Going further up, your ISP has many other clients and they each have their own IP address. When you (the clients) surf the internet, you are all sharing one IP address - the one assigned to your ISP. This is what you are seeing as your "home network IP address". No it's not just you. It's a lot of you!



The websites you go to, youtube, facebook, Yahoo, Google, since these are domain sites, they, along with your ISP, use public IP addresses, the ones registered in Domain Name Servers (DNS).

Answer 9

You have a Public IP address assigned by your Internet Service Provider.  That is the IP address you see when you Google "What is my IP".

That IP Address is assigned to your ROUTER.   Your Router in turn assigns a Private IP address to each device that connects to it.   The Private IP's normal start with 192.168.xxx.xxxx   or 10.10.xxx.xxx.