IP Address in Activity log differs from devices

[Ann01 2]

Hi

All my devices have ip addresses that begin 192.

When I an online and look at the 'Activity Log'  I see this:

Operating System/Browser: Windows/Chrome

IP address: 147.147.244.50

Approximate location: Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Do I have a problem or is this some technical thing I am unaware of?

[Ann01 2]

Many thanks John. My education continues.

[PinkElephant 8,738]

No, your devices have an internal IP address starting with 192.xxx.xxx.xxx. This is an IP address range reserved for use in local networks, not on the big web. It will only occur behind a router, and it is never directly accessible from the web.

On the web all devices share the external IP address of your router / internet connection. This is never starting with 192. The IP address space is divided up into blocks, and from the blocks you can try to read the rough location of the router / server. This is why for 147.xxx they think it should be somewhere in the Southampton area.

This is for IPv4, address in the common format of 4 groups by 3 digits each.

Since IPv4 is practically used up, it gets sort of unreliable with the geographic location. Say a multinational carrier (Vodafone for example) bought enough blocks for their customers, but in one market ran out of them. Now they may allocate free IPv4 space from another region to that users area. You wonder if somebody has accessed your account - maybe yes, but maybe it was just allocating IP ranges.

The new game is with IPv6 - but this is a completely different story.

[Ann01 2]

Many thanks PinkElephant. I thought it was probably something like that but you have put my mind at rest. Thank you.

[John in Michigan USA 140]

18 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

No, your devices have an internal IP address starting with 192.xxx.xxx.xxx. This is an IP address range reserved for use in local networks, not on the big web. It will only occur behind a router, and it is never directly accessible from the web.

On the web all devices share the external IP address of your router / internet connection. This is never starting with 192. The IP address space is divided up into blocks, and from the blocks you can try to read the rough location of the router / server. This is why for 147.xxx they think it should be somewhere in the Southampton area.

 

@PinkElephantis correct in all important respects. My nit pick is that internal or private IP addresses start with 192.168.xxx.xxx. Other addresses that start with 192 are public IP addresses (or in a few cases reserved for things other than internal/private use). And, there are some other private IP address ranges.