Every website on the web is linked to a numerical IP address. The website address resolves to an IP address to find the correct data stored in a web server. Whenever you open a website in your browser, a network of connected servers called domain name system (DNS) helps to find and return the IP address to the browser. After getting the IP address, browser will send request to web server hosting the IP address and get the required details.
Doman to IP Representation
Websites work in a complicated manner; however, you can consider the entire system like a physical library setup.
- Each website needs a domain name (site address) that is equivalent to a book name.
- Pages of a website is something like the pages of a book.
- The IP address is similar to the location code or ISBN code that a librarian needs to locate a book among thousands of books in the library.
- Domain name system (DNS) is a directory used to find the IP like librarian uses a directory or system to find the location of a book by referring its correct code.
If you only know the title of a book, it will not be useful to find its location in a big library. You need an exact location code or ISBN code to search in the system and find the book. Similarly, though you type the website address in browser’s address bar, it has to be mapped to an IP address using DNS setup to find its location. For example, you can type 172.253.119.104 to open Google’s website instead of using https://www.google.com/. Remember, Google has many IP addresses both in IPv4 and IP6 format to access the site.
Why to Find Any Website’s IP Address?
As it is evident, alphanumerical domain name is easy to remember. However, it will not always resolve to a correct IP address due to various reasons.
- You get server error which is a HTTP status code containing 3 digits starting with 5. For instance, you will see 504 gateway timeout error when one of the upstream servers in DNS setup could not resolve the domain name and timeout.
- Sometime your Internet Service Provider (ISP) has corrupted DNS that blocks certain websites locally while it is available in other part of the world.
- Website owner changed the URL of the page you have bookmarked previously and did not setup proper redirect to correct page.
In all such cases, you can simply access the websites by directly entering the IP address of the website instead of the domain name. You can also use IP address for various networking purposes like pinging the hosting server.
Find Any Website IP Address
Now, the questions comes to your mind is – how can I find a website’s IP address? This needs an understanding of how to setup a website. You need the followings to host a website on the internet that is publicly available to anyone around the world.
- Domain name – you have to register a domain name (like webnots.com) with any domain name registrar. They will create a domain ownership record called WHOIS record and allow you to setup DNS records to maintain the IP address.
- Hosting server space – purchase a storage space for storing website’s content along with a unique or shared IP address.
- Connecting domain and hosting – link the IP address to your domain name in DNS records. This DNS records will be propagated to all over the world using the network of DNS servers.
In this setup, the domain name is a fixed one which can’t be changed. However, website owner can change the hosting server and IP address. Similarly, multiple websites can share a single server’s IP address which is called shared hosting server.
Tools to Find IP Address
You can use the hosting server details and domain DNS records to find the IP address of any website publicly available on internet. There are different third-party tools available that you can use for this purpose.
- Domain to IP lookup
- DNS lookup
- Hosting server checker
1. Domain to IP Mapping Tool
This is a straightforward way to find the IP address linked to a domain. Go to the tool, enter the domain name and click “Submit” button.
This tool will get the IP address along with ISP details.
2. DNS Lookup Tool
The second option is to check the DNS records of the domain you want to find IP address. Go to DNS lookup tool, enter the domain and click “Submit” button.
You will get the complete DNS details and find the correct IP address.
3. Hosting Server Checker
As mentioned, the hosting server should be linked to the domain name using DNS records. Therefore, you can get the IP address of a domain by simply checking the hosting server details. Go to hosting server checker tool and get the IP address with a single click.
Note: WHOIS record contains the phone number, name and address details of the domain owner. Many owners use privacy tools to hide this information to avoid spamming. However, it will not contain the IP address assigned to the domain.
Why IP is Different than Server’s IP?
There are some scenarios, the above tools will show you incorrect IP address or you can’t use the IP address to access the website.
- Website uses CDN or use firewall protection with proxy DNS setup. For example, if a website uses Cloudflare CDN setup, you will see the IP address of Cloudflare and not the origin web server’s IP address. Using the IP address on the browser will prevent you from access and show error like below:
- Website is hosted on shared server and uses shared IP address. In this case, you can use reverse domain IP lookup tool find all the websites using the same IP address. However, you can’t access a specific website using the commonly shared IP address of the server.
- Website owner changed the hosting server or IP address. It will take up to 72 hours to complete ethe DNS propagation and the new IP address will be available to users all around the world. You will see a message like below when trying to access the new IP address in browser.
- It is also possible that w website owner purchased the domain but not assigned any IP address. In this case, the website will not be available publicly and you will not find IP address when using the above mentioned tools.
You will not face these problems with bigger websites like CNN, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. For smaller websites, you have no other options than to wait till the time you can access the site.
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