Do my computer and phone have the same IP address if they’re connected to the same wifi? If so, how do the websites distinguish my computer from my phone?
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The other commenters do a good job explaining NAT and how IP addresses work, but one thing worth noting is that an IP address does NOT identify a computer/device. Rather, it identifies a network interface. A computer can have multiple network interfaces. What this means for you is that if you are connected to both WiFi and Ethernet at the same time on your laptop, you can actually have two IP addresses at the same time. Your laptop would have one network interface for Ethernet and one network interface for WiFi. If you are hosting a server on your laptop and connecting to your laptop from your phone, for example, and then you unplug the Ethernet cable from your laptop and move somewhere else, then your laptop’s IP address would change (from your phone’s perspective) if your phone was using the laptop’s Ethernet IP address. And that would cause a connectivity hiccup, even though your laptop and your phone were both connected to WiFi the whole time.
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