What is the public IP address? What is the private IP address? Public vs private IP address: what are the differences? To answer this question, this post from MiniTool can help you. In addition, you can also visit MiniTool to find more Windows tips and solutions.

What Is Public IP Address?

The public IP address is the IP address that is logged by various servers or devices when you connect to them through your Internet connection. Like postal address used to deliver a postal mail to your home, the public IP address is the globally unique IP address assigned to a computing device. So, the web browser, email server or any other server device directly from the Internet could be the public IP address.

Any public accessibly network hardware such as a home router, or the servers hosting websites requires the public IP address.

What Is the Private IP Address?

As for most aspects, the Private IP address is the same as a public IP address. It is a unique identifier for all the devices behind a router or other devices that servers IP address.

With the private IP address, the devices in your home are able to have the same private IP address as anyone else around the world. Due to the private IP address are non-routable-hardware devices on the Internet and programmed to prevent devices with a private IP address from communicating directly with any other IP beyond the router that they are connected to.

In IP network, a private network is a network that uses private IP address space. Both the IPv4 and IPv6 specifications define private IP address ranges. Besides, these addresses are commonly used for LANs, offices, enterprise environments and so on.

The private IP address is not allocated to any specific organization. That is to say, anyone can use the private IP address without approval from regional or local Internet registries.

Public VS Private IP Address: What Are the Differences?

After knowing what the public and private IP address are, do you know what their differences are?

So, in the following part, we will show you the differences of private vs public IP address from the following factors.

Scope

The Scope of private IP address is local to present network, while the scope of public IP address is global.

Communication

The private IP address is used to communicate within the network, while the public IP address is used to communicate outside the network.

Format

As for the Format, they also are different. The private IP address offers uniformly, while the public IP addresses are different from the varying range.

Provider

As for the private IP address, the Local Network Operator creates private IP address using network operating system. However, as for the public IP address, the Internet Service Provider controls the Public IP address.

Cost

The private IP address is free for use, but the public IP address need to be paid.

Locate

If you want to know what the private IP address and public IP address are, the ways are also different. To locate the private IP address, you can use the ipconfig command in the Command Line window. However, if you want to know the public IP address, the method would be complicated. You need to search online like Google.

find private IP address

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Range

The private IP address has the following three ranges.

  1. 10.0.0.0 – 10.255.255.255
  2. 172.16.0.0 – 172.31.255.255
  3. 192.168.0.0 -192.168.255.255

As for the public IP address, the rest of private IP addresses are public.

Related article: How to Hide Your IP Address (2020 Updated)

Final Words

To sum up, this post has introduced what the private IP address and public IP address are and also shown some differences of public IP address vs private IP address. If you have any different ideas of public vs private IP address, you can share it in the comment zone.

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