
Just like the postal service uses your home address to deliver packages, website servers use your IP address (often referred to simply as an “IP”) to send the data you request (like a website you want to visit) to your device.īefore we get into how to find your IP address, it’s important to determine if you’re looking for a public (also called external) or a local (also called internal or private) IP address. IP addresses are also used to identify people. So when you type in googlecom, a Domain Name Service (DNS) translates the request into the string of numbers (IP address) that correspond to where Google resides on the internet: 8.8.8.8.

While people refer to a site like Google by name, computers use a string of numbers to represent that domain.
