Sometimes it is very practical to know your IP address. It is important to distinguish between an internal and external IP address. We explain how to find out your IP address.
The IP address of a computer, smartphone or any other networked device is actually its home address. Without further settings in your router, that router gives each connected device an IP address. That sometimes changes, for example after turning the router or the connected device off and on again. And by 'connected' we also mean the Wi-Fi wireless ones; Of course they also get an IP address. There is also an IP address linked to your internet connection. This address is provided by your provider. For home users, this often changes regularly; if you would like a real fixed IP address on the internet side you have to pay extra for that. Anyway, usually you have nothing to do with those IP addresses. Unless you want to find your printer on the network, for example, because its web interface often contains useful information about things like ink levels. Or allows scanning and faxing via the web interface, useful for doing that sort of thing from your smartphone or tablet. To find out your IP addresses, it is actually most useful to log in to your router. This is because it has all the IP addresses of your internal network on board, but also knows the external address. Check in the manual (or on the device itself) the address you need to use to log in to the router. Do that, after which you end up in the web interface. This differs per brand and type of router, but you will almost always find an overview of connected devices and their IP address.
External IP address
You can also often find your external IP address somewhere in the router. Provided that that router is not behind your provider's router, otherwise that second router will see the address of that provider router as the 'external' IP address (as shown in the image above). Of course you don't get much out of that. To accurately determine your external IP address, it is best to use a specially designed web page, such as this one. Always pay attention to whether it is legitimate on such sites and never download software, whether or not unsolicited. Once you have found your external IP address, you could access an internal device via port forwarding via the internet. Think, for example, of the user interface of your NAS or something similar.
Mobile tool
You can also find out the IP address of the computer you are using on the device itself. That is often a lot of searching in the setting options. Or you have to enter a terminal command. The described method via the router is much more practical. You will then not only see the IP address, but also the MAC address (a unique device code) and - in the case of the FritzBox - also the services that the device supports. Why make it difficult when it can be easy? For example, there is the Fing app for iOS and Android users in that context. This also allows you to see at a glance all devices present on the home network, including their IP address. This app also shows under Network (and a tap on the top line of this page) your internet IP address, including map with location. Ideal, so you always have a network scanner in your pocket! You can see a screenshot of this tool at the top of this article.
