face IP : Java Glossary

by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
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face IP

When you use a router on a LAN, the outside world sees you as the external face IP of your router, not the IP of your machine. There are five IPs to be concerned with. working from the outside in:

The IP of the computer somewhere on the net that does DNS look up for you, e.g. 64.59.160.13.
The IP of the computer your router talks directly to at the ISP headquarters. This is sometimes called the Gateway IP, e.g. 24.68.232.1 .
face IP e.g. 24.68.231.84, the IP your router presents to the outside world. This is how various websites know you (and anyone else on your LAN accessing the Internet). This is sometimes called your public IP, but that usually refers to a static IP, more or less permanently assigned, where a face IP can change daily. Since this is the IP of your entire LAN to the outside world, it is sometimes called the WAN IP.
The internal IP of your router e.g. 192.168.2.1 on the LAN. Just to confuse you, this is also sometimes called the gateway IP. The confusion arises because in the old days computers connected directly to the gateway computer belonging to the ISP, not indirectly via a LAN-based router pretending to be such a gateway computer.
The IP of your computer on the LAN, e.g. 92.168.2.2.

To find out your face IP, the IP that outside world (beyond your firewall) thinks your IP and domain name is, try any of the following:

Your face IP:[38.103.63.16] is displayed at the bottom of every page of this website. I do this with Novell SSI.
IPchicken.com: tells your face ip, and which ports you have open. They also tell you your face name, e.g. your URL on the web, possibly temporarily assigned for your connection. It might look something like this S010609991195576dda.gv.shawcable.net or d207-81-138-97.bchsia.telus.net That is not my real one. I don’t want to encourage hackers.
http://checkip.dyndns.org:8245/
http://www.whatismyipaddress.com has many annoying ads you must close to discover the answer.

The face ip is different from the IP of your computer on the LAN. An IP of a computer on a LAN is typically something like 192.168.2.7. The router has two ips, one it talks to the computers on the lan often 192.168.2.1 and one it uses to talk to the outside world, dynamically assigned by the ISP using DHCP.

To find out your internal LAN IP, on windows run ipconfig.exe. It will alwasy have the form 192.168.2.x.

IP
whois

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	Canadian Mind Products
	mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
	Your face IP:[38.103.63.16]	The information on this page is for non-military use only.
	You are visitor number 8,271.	Military use includes use by defence contractors.
	You can get a fresh copy of this page from:	or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/Mindprod website mirror)
	http://mindprod.com/jgloss/faceip.html	J:\mindprod\jgloss\faceip.html