How to Check Your Mac's IP Address

An IP address is a unique number assigned to your computer that allows it to connect to the Internet and be recognized by your ISP and other machines on the Web. If you want to find out the IP address currently assigned to your Mac, you can do so by running a command on the Mac command line.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Apple Computer running Mac OSX

1. Log in to your Mac computer.

2. Type "terminal" in the search box.

3. Click on the "Terminal" application.

4. Type "ifconfig" into the Terminal and press "Enter." The IP address of your Mac is displayed on the Terminal.

Tips & Warnings

• If the computer is part of a LAN, the IP address that shows is a private address (or internal). This IP address may be dynamic or static, depending on how your network is configured.

• If the computer is connected directly to the modem, the IP address that shows will be your public IP address, the one the ISP has assigned to you.

• You can check out your public IP (if you don't want to deal with your router) from several websites. Check out the Resources section for "What's My IP."

• If the computer is part of a LAN, the IP address that shows is a Private address (or internal). This IP address may be dynamic or static depending on how your network is configured.

• If the computer is connected directly to the modem, the IP address that shows will be your Public IP address, the one the ISP has assigned to you.

• You can check out your Public IP (if you don't want to deal with your router) from several web sites. Check out the Resources Section for "What's My IP"

References

• Apple: ifconfig