IPs and Authorities

[Blhurr]

You think they have a running database that ties IPs to residence addresses? Just a ponderance. =O

[COCKZILLA]

i HIGHLY doubt it...

[shroomy]

there really isnt a way from a technical standpoint.

besides the 100's of millions of IP's most of them are dynamically assigned or go through NAT so they are not the actual ip of the computer but of a router.

but if they have a specific ip for a specific date and they hit the isp within a day or so (which is as long as they keep the records) they could trace you unless you bounced through something to mask your ip.

[Blhurr]

So when board admins block an IP they are blocking a router IP that could potentially block other people?

[Blhurr]

I was fairly confident that IP addresses were hardwired into our machines. They are arbitrary tags? When are they assigned and can one machine get multiple IPs ? Anyhow.

[COCKZILLA]

if you're dialing up into something like AOL.. u can have a different IP each time.. it's not like a serial-number that traces back directly to ur computer

[shroomy]

well... it depends.

your machine will always have an IP address, but that is not nececarily the ip that the internet will see, and actually probably is not.

It all depends how things are configured. If you have a dial-up account, you will get a new ip every time you dial up. the ip will be assigned by your ISP and will be in a range of ip's that they have reserved/registered.

If you are on a lan (even a home lan with a linksys router or similar) there are a couple choices. The most common is NAT, network address translation, In this case each machine has an internal ip (inside the firewall) but everytime they access the internet, the router uses the ip that is assigned to the router. This is how you can have multiple PC's with one connection/ip (DSL, Cable Modem, T1 etc.)

and yes it is difficult to block an ip because it may be assigned to another person after the offending person logs off. This is especially true of large isp's like AOL etc. Your only choice is to block their whole range of thousands of ip's.

and then to make matters more interesting, yes a single machine can have more than one IP. This is usually only the case of servers that are serving multiple domains. For example I want to host www.shroomy.com on the same box as www.dare.com

hope this helps..... but prob will just confuse most or cause more questions.

and then of course some ip's are dynamic, or assigned everytime you start the pc (or your dial up connection) and some are static where it is the same ip forever.

[Blhurr]

Actually it helped alot. I'm not unfamiliar with computers, just networking. Thanks.

[gambitrah]

Theoretically there is a possibility that someone could contact each isp on the planet and buy\get a list of all the subscribers...which would easily link to the subscriber (not necessarily the user mind you) but as Shroom said...if u are behind any kind of firewall that translates (NAT) that would rule off any IP's for corporate use...course some apt complexes here in CO use a firewall for the "site" and they share out the net access to the whole place for a price...then again if u use WLAN through a FW then those will also be hidden as well...

CP should have a tech\geek forum

[dirtyepic18]

na, legal issues aside, it wouldnt be at all possible.

there's no real way to tie IP adresses to physical adresses (without spending a week going through an ISP's logs, which requires a court order to do).

anyway, 90% of the world is still on dialup connections, which means the IP's completely change every time you log on.

[magilicuti]

sounds like someone is up to no good

[gambitrah]

i hope all the 56k users stay there and leave the rest of the bandwidth for people that use the net for things other then AOL...it would be interesting to gather such a list...sounds like someone has a lot of time to waste to lol...

[Evan]

Very simply....If u have cable modem and/or DSL you can most likely be traced back to your IP. They'll have a log of what IP has been assigned to the MAC address of the modem your service has sent you. There ARE ways around this. They have sites like www.anonymizer.com which lets u browse anonomously. Another quick way, is to log onto AOL though your TCP/IP stack and use the internal web browser of AOL. Everytime you post, you'll be using one of AOLs thousands of IPs, and is virtually impossible to trace. You can try it by going to a site that replies back to you with your IP and keep hitting AOLs refresh button. I tried it and never got once back the same IP.

Evan