In order to better understand how all this actually works, let’s imagine the following scenario:

Example: You want to access the 5-Minute Crafts’ website from your computer and its YouTube channel from your smartphone.

In a way, doing that would be like if, in the real world, you were sending a letter asking for information to the 5-Minute Crafts’ site on the one hand, and to the 5-Minute Crafts’ YouTube channel on the other. Both of them will need to know where to send the reply to your letters, which will contain the information you’ve requested: that address will be the public IP address assigned to your router by your ISP.

But then, once that information is sent to your router it still needs to reach each one of the devices connected to the LAN that requested it. In a way, your router will be acting as a sort of mailman and each of the devices is a member of a family living under the same roof. The address of that home is your public IP address and the name of each of the recipients is their private IP address.

The 5-Minute Crafts’ site and its YouTube channel will both send their “letters” to your public IP address and then your router will deliver the corresponding information to the device that requested it by using their own private addresses to identify them.

Comments to article «What Your IP Address Is and How to Find It»