I have checked my ip address using the network utility is osx and it is different to the last accessed ip address in gmail?
2 Answers
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.
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.
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1And 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.– BobMar 6, 2012 at 12:07
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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– datatooMar 6, 2012 at 15:30
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@slhck I meant that datatoo's and Bob's comments have nothing to do with neither your answer nor the question.– infMar 7, 2012 at 8:53
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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– slhckMar 7, 2012 at 8:59