Hello,
I’m working on configuring my router for WoW and other things like my game consoles, and before I mess anything up, I am wanting to make sure I understand the difference between an internal and external IP address.
From what I looked up, your internal IP addresses are specific to things connected to your router, such as a computer, console, tablet, cell phone, etc. and the external IP address is the one assigned to the router that you type into the search bar of a browser when you are wanting to configure the router itself. Does this sound correct? If not, what am I getting wrong?
Thank you.
Your external IP address is what you show the world to connect to the internet. when blizzard sends data to you, it sends it to your external IP. you can see what yours is at a site like this http://www.whatsmyip.org/ The only time you yourself might need your external IP is if you wanted to remotely connect to your network while you are not on it, which doesn’t sound like your situation.
I could get some technicalities wrong here, but I think this is close enough. Internal IP address can be used to refer to any address that is assigned within your home network - nobody from the outside world sees these, it’s just you. You would assign your router itself an internal IP address, to access it. Then your router will assign each device connected to it its own IP address, in a range that you can define. So your computer and each connected device also has an internal IP address.
On a computer, you can see yours if you search for cmd or open a command prompt, and type in ipconfig. In that list you’ll see an IPv4 address - that is your internal IP address, what your router uses to communicate to that device. I think you can normally see a list of these IP’s and connected devices in the router settings too, but not always. Keep in mind - each device gets assigned an ip address in numerical order by the router, the first available is what the device gets. so if devices disconnect and reconnect, they can receive a different internal IP, so some things require you to have your router give a device a static internal IP address.
Very informative, thank you! I understand it more now, on my router configurations here on my browser, it’s asking me for the internal and external IP for each port I forward. So I’m thinking I need to assign static IP addresses to each of my devices so just in case, for example, my PS4 is disconnected and something else like a tablet newly connects to the internet before my PS4 connects back up, the tablet could take the PS4’s old IP address and now my ports that used to be forwarded to the PS4 are now being done on the tablet.