Find your External IP Address
This is the third article in a series on remotely accessing you
computer using VNC (Virtual Network Computer). It's a real
life saver in situations when you need to get to a file or email
on your computer at home or the office. In this article I'm
going to show you how to find out what your external IP (Internet
Protocol) address is. This is the address that you ISP or
Internet Service Provider assigns to your modem or computer. All
along I've been assuming that you're using a high-speed
connection, however everything I've talked about applies to
any connection to the internet, even dial-up. It's just that
using an application such as VNC on a dial-up connection can be
painfully slow.
Let's start with an explanation of what an IP address is.
It's a series of numbers that uniquely identifies your
computer on the internet. It's helps determine how emails get
routed to the proper place as well as opening the correct website
in your browser. Fortunately, domain names (
"http://www.deconfuser.com/">www.deconfuser.com) were created
in an attempt to make it easier to remember how to find a
website. The IP address for
"http://www.deconfuser.com/">www.deconfuser.com is
72.4.160.209. But if you were to type this IP address into your
browser you'll just get the server's default page since
the deconfuser website is hosted in a shared environment. That is
to say that there are many websites that also use 72.4.160.209 as
their IP address. But all you have to remember is that
"http://www.deconfuser.com/">www.deconfuser.com takes you to
72.4.160.209. Likewise your computer or modem also has it's
own unique IP address known as it's external IP address. In
order to locate your computer from anywhere in the world
you'll need to know what this IP address is. But, the
ISP's will often recycle the IP they've given you and
reassign you another IP address. So I'll also show you a way
to always know how to reach your computer externally by
remembering something as simple as
"http://www.deconfuser.com/">www.deconfuser.com.
In order to find your external IP address visit
"http://www.consoltec.net/ip_address/">http://www.consoltec.net/ip_address/
and it will be displayed on the web page for you in red. This is
a free service provided by Consoltec. There are many such
services out there, but many of them could come along with
Spyware and other harmful Malware. Now all this tells you is the
external or visible IP address of the machine or network
you're currently on. Using the previous two articles and this
external IP address you should now be able to remotely access
your computer with VNC.
But if your IP address ever changes or your somewhere and have
forgotten what your IP address was, this external IP address
service from Consoltec will do you no good. What you need is a
domain name that will update to your new external IP address
anytime it changes. Fortunately there are many such services out
there. There are many that are free as well. One such service
that I've been using for many years is
"http://www.dyndns.org/">http://www.dyndns.org. They do offer
paid services as well, but for basic dynamic domain names
it's free. In order to get started, just create an account on
their system. Choose one of the many domain names available. You
could get something like deconfuser.homelinux.net or one of the
many from their list of domain names. The system will go ahead
and detect your current external IP address and your new domain
should now resolve to your current external IP address. Now all
you have to remember is your domain address. In order for it to
automatically update with your new external IP address any time
it changes, you'll need to download one of their update
clients found under “Support”->”Update
Clients”. There are clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
There isn't enough space here to discuss the setup of all of
them but the general procedure is once downloaded and installed
configure it to run automatically, enter your dyndns.org username
and password, and the domain address you registered with your
account. This program will run in the background and anytime your
IP address is reset by your ISP, it will detect the new external
IP address. It will then log into your dyndns.org account
updating the external IP address for your domain name, and all
you'll ever have to remember is your domain address in order
to access your computer from anywhere in the world. This
completes the series on accessing your computer remotely and I
hope that you now have the basics down. While I chose VNC to
demonstrate the concept, it will work well with any program that
allows remote access. If you like to game you'll use many of
these same techniques to allow your finds to find your server in
order to play.
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