eli5: What is IP address and does it give your EXACT location or just the internet provider?

Question

eli5: What is IP address and does it give your EXACT location or just the internet provider?

In: Technology

Answer 1

An IP address is a unique number that identifies your connection on the internet. As far as the *technical requirements* go, that’s it. It is in no way associated to a physical location.

In *practical* terms, ISP are assigned blocks of IP addresses they can assign to their users. So your IP address will always relate to a specific ISP.

ISPs in turn typically assign specific blocks of addresses to their exchanges – physical points around the network that contain network equipment. This is done for network optimisation and management purposes, and these registries are usually public knowledge. Depending on where these exchanges exist and how the IP address blocks are assigned, the IP address may be associated to a country, state, county, metropolitan area, neighbourhood/suburb, block, street, or an individual multi-tenanted building. But never to an individual residence.

So we know that IP address will never link to a specific street address or location, though typically it will be associated to the suburb or above. But it’s difficult to say exactly how accurate it can be based on public data, because it depends on how the country or ISP operates, whether it’s a metropolitan vs rural area, etc.

Keep in mind that your ISP always knows your IP address at any given time, and has your billing details. So they can link your IP address to your geographic location. But this is not usually public data, presumably your country has privacy laws that prevent exposing this, though it can potentially be accessed by lawful (court order/warrant) or unlawful (hacking/espionage) means. But this is not an option for the Joe Average internet user.

So TL;DR an IP address technically speaking has no relationship at all to a physical location, it’s not like you can translate 123.456.789.012 to GPS coordinates or a street address or something. However the way we use them in practice and the kinds of records being kept, means one could associate an IP address to an approximate or exact location, depending on what access they have.