What Is My IP Address? Public vs Private IP Explained

The IP address shown in your laptop's Wi-Fi settings may not be the same address a website sees.

Duck Cloud's What Is My IP? shows public request information exposed through the network edge.

Public IP

A public IP is visible on the public internet. It may belong to your ISP, mobile carrier, VPN, corporate gateway, proxy, or cloud server.

Private IP

Private IPv4 ranges are commonly used inside local networks, including addresses from 192.168.x.x, 10.x.x.x, and 172.16.x.x through 172.31.x.x.

NAT

Network Address Translation allows multiple local devices to share one public IPv4 address. Your phone and laptop can have different private IPs while websites see the same public IP.

IPv4 vs IPv6

IPv4 addresses look like:

203.0.113.10

IPv6 uses a much larger address space and looks like:

2001:db8::1

A device can have both.

VPNs and proxies

When a VPN is active, websites usually see the VPN exit IP rather than your ISP-facing address.

Corporate networks may also send traffic through centralized gateways.

Mobile networks

Mobile carriers may use carrier-grade NAT, meaning many subscribers can share public IPv4 space.

A public IP should therefore not be treated as a unique person identifier.

Geolocation

IP geolocation is approximate. It may identify a country, region, city, or ISP, but it does not reliably reveal an exact physical address.

Developer uses

Checking your public IP is useful for firewall allowlists, VPN troubleshooting, API allowlists, remote access, and IPv4/IPv6 testing.

DNS and IP

Use DNS Lookup to inspect A and AAAA records for a hostname.

Use IPv4 Converter when you need dotted-decimal, integer, hex, or binary representations.

Your public IP describes the network path visible to the service you are contacting. It is useful diagnostic information, not a complete identity or location signal.