Do you need to know what your IP address is, but you just don’t know how to find out? Read on, and we will show you a couple of simple ways to find it. By the way, all commands displayed are bracketed <command>. Just type what’s between the brackets, not the brackets themselves.
Finding your Local Area Network Address (LAN)
This first method we will show you is for finding you “local IP address”, otherwise known as your LAN, and this example is for those people who use the Linux operating system. On your desktop open a virtual terminal window, <ctrl+alt+t>, which means push all three keys on your keyboard at the same time, the Ctrl key, the Alt key, and the letter t. Now using the virtual terminal type the following command to find your LAN: <ip address>. You will see displayed something similar to this:
me@my-pc:~$ ip address
1: lo: mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp1s0: mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:01:2e:82:27:7b brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: enp0s31f6: mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 00:01:2e:82:27:7a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.112/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute enp0s31f6
valid_lft 76517sec preferred_lft 76517sec
inet6 2600:8803:c400:2c:dec2:a8ac:79ac:7761/64 scope global dynamic noprefixroute
valid_lft 49610sec preferred_lft 49610sec
inet6 fe80::3cbf:d301:fe32:3059/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
4: wlp2s0: mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 44:03:2c:93:2d:94 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
me@my-pc:~$
We highlighted the command in purple, and your LAN is in red. Your LAN is the local address of your computer. The green text is the command prompt you see whenever you open a virtual terminal. It will be slightly different on your computer.
Finding Your Public, or Wide Area Network address (WAN)
This next one is a little more complex. In order to find out what your IP address is you have to ask someone else. Its kind of like asking someone if you have doughnut crumbs on your face. 🙂 You can’t see the crumbs, but others can.
If you don’t already have a virtual terminal open on your desktop, open one with this command: <ctrl+alt+t>, and using the virtual terminal enter the following command, and make sure you type it exactly as shown: <dig TXT -4 o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com>. This command asks Google for a little help in finding out what your WAN IP address is. This is the address other people around the world use to contact your computer. You will see something like the following. Bear in mind that we changed the numbers to protect the innocent. 🙂
me@my-pc:~$ dig TXT -4 o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com
; <<>> DiG 9.16.27-Debian <<>> TXT -4 o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17282
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;o-o.myaddr.l.google.com. IN TXT
;; ANSWER SECTION:
o-o.myaddr.l.google.com. 60 IN TXT “000.111.222.333“
;; Query time: 15 msec
;; SERVER: 216.239.32.10#53(216.239.32.10)
;; WHEN: Mon Jan 15 12:00:00 EST 2026
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 67
me@my-pc:~$
Your WAN IP address will be the one in red. Again, the command istelf is in purple, and the green text represents the command prompt in your terminal window.
Finding Your Wide Area Network address (WAN) if You’re Using Windows, or if You want to do it the way nubes do it.
Open a browser like Firefox or Chrome, and enter this website name in the address bar: <checkip.amazonaws.com>. Amazon will happily respond by giving you your WAN IP address.
Hope this helps.