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Start where your question is

Most people arrive here holding one of about six questions. Rather than making you guess which guide answers yours, here they are directly.

The on-ramp. What an address is, how the two you have differ, how IPv4 and IPv6 relate, why yours changes, and how a website guesses where you are. The pillar page carries all of it in one read, with reference tables and an FAQ that live only there.

• What is an IP address? The plain English guide, and the three things people get wrong.
• Public IP vs Private IP. Two addresses, NAT, and every reserved range.
• What is IPv4? Classful addressing, CIDR, and how 4.3 billion ran out.
• What is IPv6? Notation rules, dual stack, and why adoption took decades.
• Why does my IP change? DHCP leases, reboots, and carrier-grade NAT.
• How does IP geolocation work? Registry data, routing, and measurement.

The calm version of a subject where most of the search results want to sell you a VPN. What your address genuinely exposes, what it does not, how it compares to cookies and fingerprinting, and a proportionate response if you think it has been exposed. We sell nothing and there are no affiliate links on this site.

• What can someone do with your IP address? Every claim sorted into true, false, and true but misleading.
• Can someone find me from my IP? The honest answer, and why lookup sites cannot do what they advertise.
• How websites log and use your IP. What a log line holds, and who receives your address on one page load.
• IP vs cookies vs fingerprinting. Four ways you get recognized, ranked by how well they work.
• How to hide or change your IP. Every method, and the columns most guides leave out.
• What to do if your IP is exposed. A proportionate response, in order.

Routers, gateways, ports and the small pile of jargon between you and a working connection. Written for the moment a game says your NAT type is strict, or a camera app wants a port opened, or a support article says to log into your router and nobody said how.

• Find your router's IP address. Step by step on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Linux and a Chromebook.
• What is 192.168.1.1? Why that number, why millions of networks share it, and why it is safe.
• Port forwarding explained. What a rule does, how to add one safely, and the five reasons yours fails.
• NAT types explained. Why your console says Strict, and why Moderate is the target rather than Open.
• What is carrier-grade NAT? The ten-second test, and the four ways around it.
• Dynamic DNS explained. A name that follows a moving address, and when a mesh VPN is better.

The arithmetic behind every network, taught as one idea rather than a set of procedures: an address is 32 bits and a line is drawn through them. Everything else follows from where that line sits.

• CIDR notation explained. What the slash number counts, and why a bigger number is a smaller network.
• Subnet masks explained. The nine values a mask octet can hold, plus binary, hex and wildcards.
• Network, broadcast and usable hosts. Where the minus two comes from, and the two prefixes where it does not apply.
• The subnet cheat sheet. Every prefix from /8 to /32, with masks, wildcards and host counts.

Nothing in an IP address encodes a place, so every location you have been shown is an inference. Where the guess comes from, why yours is wrong, how to get it corrected, and why a service can be certain about your country while being wrong about your city.

• How does IP geolocation work? Registry records, routing, measurement and corrections.
• Why is my IP location wrong? Five causes, and the symptom that tells you which is yours.
• How to fix a wrong location. Filing corrections, and why there is no single place to file them.
• Streaming and regional access. Territorial rights, and the four layers a service checks.
• The uses that actually work. Content delivery, fraud scoring and compliance.

What is next

All five pillars are written. What is still coming is a tool rather than a guide.

• A subnet calculator. Give it an address and a prefix, get the network, broadcast, usable range and masks, with a shareable link. Handling the cases most calculators get wrong, including /31 and /32.