ISP only gives 1 IP for whole network?

[renegade55897]

Every time i go to whatismyip from different computers it always shows the same IP. I have a dlink router. Every computer has has a different local IP but the internet IP always stays the same. I have changed it a couple times by changing my router MAC address but it always only gives me 1 ip for all computer. Is this normal? I thought every computer has to have a different IP? Any comments are welcome. Thanks!

[wimiadmin]

This is perfectly normal. Each computer on its own network must have its own IP. So your network of computers do have their own IPs.....192.168.x.x. There are finite amounts of public IP addresses. For home users, 1 IP is plenty, for small businesses, 1 IP is plenty as well.

If you're interested you can Google IPv4 as well as IPv6. This will explain the amount of IPs available on the internet.

[renegade55897]

i understand every computer on my network does have a different local ip (192.168.x.x) but is it normal for every computer on my network to be assigned the same internet ip by the router, from the modem? The main reason why im worried is for security/anonymity reasons. I'm pretty sure my ISP assigns IPs by MAC addresses, so i suppose that could be the reason that im only getting one IP is cause my router gets assigned 1 IP by its MAC address then my router just passes the same IP to all computer? sorry i think there was some confusion in my first post.

[AboveTheLogic]

Your ISP is assigning IPs by MAC, and what it's doing is assigning an IP to your router's MAC.

Your router then shares out this connection to the machines on your LAN.

[clanmills]

Hi R

There are two different networks. The WAN (Wide Area Network = Internet) and the LAN (Local Area Internet = your home network). The router sits in both. When you go to whatismyip.com, you get the WAN IP address of your router. When you run the command ipconfig.exe (or ifconfig on UNIX) you'll see both listed.

Nobody in the internet can see 'inside' your network unless you change the defaults on your router. If you are worried about this possibility, there are web sites which will run tests on your IP address and provide you with warnings about vulnerabilities.

Your router has a MAC address (which is globally unique). When you log on to your ISP, he can see that. He allocates your WAN IP address from his pool of numbers. Some ISPs always assign the same IP for the same MAC.

However you shouldn't think that every machine on your network has the same IP address. Every machine on your network has a unique IP address. Every machine can access the internet through the same router. The router has 2 unique IP addresses - its WAN and its LAN addresses.

Robin