The IP & Networking Library
Everything we love about IP addresses, networking, the history of the internet, and the strange little zoo of animal "what's my IP" websites — explained in plain English.
🌐 IP Address Basics
What Is an IP Address?
The complete beginner's guide to the numbers that identify every device online.
IPv4 vs IPv6
The differences, the examples, and why the world needed a second address system.
Public vs Private IPs
Why your device has two different addresses and what each one does.
How IP Geolocation Works
How a website guesses your city from your IP — and why it's so often wrong.
Static vs Dynamic IPs
Which kind you have, why it changes, and when it matters.
What Is a Subnet Mask?
Subnets, CIDR notation, and how networks are carved up, explained simply.
IPv4 Exhaustion
How a 4-billion-address system ran dry — and what happened next.
What Is NAT?
The quiet trick that lets one public IP serve a whole household.
Reserved IP Addresses
127.0.0.1, 192.168.x.x, and the other addresses with special jobs.
How to Find Your IP
Step-by-step for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android and your router.
🔌 Networking Fundamentals
What Is DNS?
The internet's phone book, and how a name becomes an address.
What Is a Router?
The box that connects your home to the internet, demystified.
TCP vs UDP
Two ways to send data, and why streaming and web pages use different ones.
What Is a Port?
Ports, sockets, and the numbers behind 80, 443 and 22.
What Is a MAC Address?
Your hardware's permanent name, and how it differs from an IP.
What Is DHCP?
How your devices get an IP address automatically, without you lifting a finger.
What Is an ISP?
What your internet provider actually does between you and the web.
Bandwidth vs Latency
Why 'fast internet' is really two different things.
How Data Travels
Packets, routing and hops: the journey of a single click.
The OSI Model
Seven layers, in plain English, with real examples.
📡 Protocols & Deep Dives
HTTP vs HTTPS
How the web moves pages around, and what the padlock really means.
What Is TLS/SSL?
The encryption handshake that secures almost everything you do online.
What Is BGP?
The protocol that stitches thousands of networks into one internet.
What Is an ASN?
How the internet is organised into thousands of networks.
Reverse DNS & PTR
Turning an IP address back into a name, and why it matters.
Ping & Traceroute
How ICMP lets you measure and map a network path.
Why IPv6 Is Slow
The technically superior protocol that took decades to catch on.
What Is Anycast?
How one IP address can live in a hundred places at once.
🔒 Privacy & Security
How to Hide Your IP
VPNs, proxies and Tor, compared honestly.
What Is a VPN?
How a virtual private network reroutes and protects your traffic.
What Is a Proxy?
The middleman servers that fetch the web on your behalf.
What Is Tor?
Onion routing and how it hides who's talking to whom.
Can My IP Find Me?
What an IP really reveals about you — and what it doesn't.
Browser Fingerprinting
How sites recognise you without a single cookie.
What Is a DDoS Attack?
How floods of traffic knock services offline, and how they're stopped.
Is an IP Personal Data?
What privacy laws say about the number that identifies your connection.
🕰️ History of the Internet
History of the Internet
From cold-war research project to the network that runs the world.
What Was ARPANET?
The experimental network that grew into the internet.
History of TCP/IP
How two protocols became the common language of every network.
Birth of the Web
How one researcher's project turned the internet into the web.
History of DNS
From a single hand-edited file to the global naming system.
The Small Web
The internet's handmade, human-scale corner — and why it still matters.
History of IPv6
How the internet planned its own escape from running out of room.
Who Runs the Internet?
ICANN, IANA, the RIRs and the surprisingly human answer.
🦆 The IP Animal Websites
History of IP Checkers
Why a whole genre of websites exists just to show you a number.
The Story of IP Chicken
How a plain little bird became the internet's most famous IP checker.
Old-School IP Checkers
IP Monkey and the first generation of animal IP sites.
Why Animal IP Sites?
The folk tradition behind the internet's strange little zoo.
How an IP Checker Works
A look under the hood at what happens when you load one.
Build Your Own IP Checker
A friendly guide to making your own 'what's my IP' page.
The IP Animal Field Guide
A tour of the species in the internet's IP zoo.
Extinct IP Websites
The lost animals of the old web, and what happened to them.