How to Looking up a Domain IP Address

Have you ever wondered how a domain name works, what an IP address is or how the entire internet work? Ever encountered warning messages from your firewall or anti virus software about an IP address that was attempting to gain access to your system? Did you know that you can actually check who is accessing your system, who owns a site, etc., by doing an IP address look up? Yes, you can and here’s how.

IP Addresses Explained
IP addresses are like nerve endings that identify every website, every network and every device that is connected to the internet. To be able to connect to the internet, send and receive information using the internet, your computer or web-enabled devices need to have a unique IP address.

What is DHCP?
Assigning IP addresses to devices is done using the DHCP or Dynamic Host Control Protocol. It dynamically assigns unused IP addresses to devices allowing them to access the network. Every time a device disconnects from a network, the IP address assigned to the device is released and becomes available for reassignment to another device.

Many times, it is essential to have the same IP address while accessing a network. For this, you need a static IP address for the device. If your device is set up to use a static IP address, then only your device can use that IP address and it cannot be assigned to any other device even when you disconnect from the network. All websites typically have static IP addresses and you will get the same IP address for a domain name every time you do a domain IP look up for a particular website.

IP Address Lookup
Now that you know what a static and dynamic IP address is, you can do an IP address look up of any website or device. If you look up the IP address of a website or a domain, you are doing a search on the domain name server or DNS. You can also check the IP address of your computer. Checking your IP address or doing a DNS look up or Domain IP look up does not compromise your computer’s security. This information is freely available and your web browser can access it from any server it connects to.