1

I have checked my ip address using the network utility is osx and it is different to the last accessed ip address in gmail?

1
  • try going to www.ifconfig.me, it'll show your wan information, which should match what gmail says.
    – Sirex
    Mar 6, 2012 at 12:06

2 Answers 2

1

Network utility shows you your IP address of your special machine in your home netwrok, probably something like 192.168.x.x in gmail you see your global IP address which your ISP assigned to you.

7

The IP address Network Utility shows is the internal address, most probably given to you by a router. It uses internal (private) IP addresses that don't appear in the "public" internet, like 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.*.

You can find these in your Network settings:

The address shown in Gmail is most likely the external WAN IP of your router, i.e. the one your ISP gave to you. You can show your external IP by going to a service like whatismyip.com.

As you can see, these differ – but I know that there is a router in between. Only sometimes, machines are directly connected to the public internet and don't have private IPs, but this is mostly the case for, let's say, web servers.

5
  • 1
    And if your public IP is dynamic or through an ISP proxy (cycled by the ISP rather than being fixed, possibly shared with other customers), it could easily change without you knowing, unless you specifically check before and after the change.
    – Bob
    Mar 6, 2012 at 12:07
  • And if you have a phone accessing through a cell network, you may have an additional ip address due to that showing up as well
    – datatoo
    Mar 6, 2012 at 15:30
  • And all that has to do what with the question?
    – inf
    Mar 6, 2012 at 23:16
  • @slhck I meant that datatoo's and Bob's comments have nothing to do with neither your answer nor the question.
    – inf
    Mar 7, 2012 at 8:53
  • Well, what Bob said could explain sudden changes in the external IP while the internal always stays the same. That's good to know, imho @bam
    – slhck
    Mar 7, 2012 at 8:59

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .