OT: How Can I Find My IP Address? Options

[Bruce Allert]

Tuesday morning I could not get on line or get connected with Outlook for Email. My wife & I are networked & share the comcast cable. Up until now everything was fine, no roblems. 2 days before my problem she installed a new firewall on her computer. I don't know if this has anything to do with my not being able to get online but it seems a little suspect. I want to know my IP address because she can see when her computer gets pinged. If it's mine doin the pinging we should be able to un-block me & I'll have access again. We are networked thru her computer.
Anyone got any ideas?

........b
ps. online from work! <_<

[lapuwali]

The "Command Prompt" and "ipconfig" method will work on many versions of Windows, and that IP will be the IP of the machine you're sitting in front of, but knowing this may not help.

The problem you're likely seeing here is the new firewall isn't configured to forward traffic to your machine. You need to look at the settings for "Network Address Translation" (NAT) if you're both going to be able to share the same cable connection. One problem you face here is that it's very likely the IP of your box isn't fixed, but can change over time. Many boxes are now set up using Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which generates a new address for you, perhaps regularly while you're connected, sometimes only when you power up again.

Basically, there's an "outside" IP (which is what whatsmyip would report), and two "inside" IPs. Your wife's box has both an outside and an inside IP. Your box only has an inside IP. The firewall software is supposed to be able to allow connections from your box and forward the traffic out, then forward the return traffic back to you (this is NAT). To the cable company, it looks like you only have one IP address (the outside IP on your wife's box), and it looks like all requests from both computers are coming from (and returning to) that one IP address. The NAT software handles splitting it back out again.

If the instructions of the firewall software you purchased are too difficult to figure out (or don't exist), a far less aggrevating way to handle this is to buy a hardware firewall/router, which are cheap ($30-60), from a vendor like Linksys or Netgear, and are nearly self-configuring these days. They'll work with any version of Windows, and require no software configuration.