How to Find Out the IP of a Mac

The vast majority of people use the internet daily to perform millions of actions, in fact, it has become a practically indispensable tool on a daily basis. However, a large part of the users do not really know how the network works and many of its elements. For this reason, in this post we want to tell you everything you need to know about the IP of your Apple computer.

What is IP and what is it for?

One of the most basic terms and concepts that you should know is the IP, since it is very important in the network. IP is the result of the acronym Internet Protocol, which at the end of the day is internet protocol. As we mentioned, the IP is vital because without it, you could not be connected or connected to the network, since it is the method used to recognize each and every one of the users who browse continuously. It is the protocol that aims to establish communications between all the devices that want to connect and relate to each other.

How to Find Out the IP of a Mac

To put it in some way, the IP is the number that will identify you to each and every one of the devices that connect to the internet. Making a simile with other elements of real life, we could say that it is the ID of your device or its license plate. This identifier is a numerical code, in the case of IPv4, which is the traditional IP that we know. However, due to the huge number of devices that connect to the network, the time has come when there are not enough combinations of numbers to identify the different users, therefore there are also IPv6, which are a new type of protocol that comes to replace IPv4, but in this case it is alphanumeric combinations which greatly increases the number of combinations that can be formed.

MacBook

Differences between public IP and private IP

Once we have already talked about the concept of IP as such, we must differentiate two types of IP, public and private. Let’s start with the public ones. Public IPs are the IPs that each of the devices connected to the internet have in the face of the global network, that is, it is the address of the web pages in their domains and the services offered by the internet. On the other hand, there are also, as we have mentioned, private IP addresses, which are those that are used to identify each of the devices that are connected to a local network, such as your home Wi-Fi network or of workplace. The biggest difference between the two is that private IPs are characterized by being fixed for each device and also are not accessible from the internet.

So you can know the IP address of your Mac

Obviously, since there are both public and private IP addresses, there are also different procedures to know both combinations and as you can see, the way to know your public IP is much easier and more accessible for the user than the procedure to know what your address is. Private IP, however, we are going to explain everything to you below and you will see how the process involves practically no difficulties.

Knowing your public IP is really easy

As it says in the title of this section, if what you want is to know your public IP, the process for this is really simple, in fact, you just have to put the following in a search engine, “What is my public IP?” and any of the pages that Google offers you will immediately provide you with your public IP.

mi IP publica

Know your private IP

Although the process to be able to know your private IP is not as comfortable and simple as that of knowing your public IP, the truth is that it does not involve much difficulty and the steps to follow are also quite simple to carry out for any user, you even have two ways of knowing this information. Let’s go with it.

First, you can use the terminal and a specific command to find out your private IP, for this you just have to follow the steps indicated below.

  1. Open the Terminal app.
  2. Type the command “ifconfig” in the terminal.
  3. Hit enter.
  4. After “inet6” you can see what your IPv6 address is.

IP privada terminal

To know your IPv4, the steps you have to follow, in this case, are the following.

  1. Open System Preferences.
  2. Click Network.
  3. Under the status of your Wi-Fi network you have your IPv4 address available.

IP privada Preferencias

As you can see, the steps you have to follow both to know your private IP and your public IP are really simple. We recommend that you always keep it in mind because on some occasions it can be very useful to resolve certain conflicts or even to be able to answer some questions that may be asked by the technicians of your telephone company when you ask them a question. due to the bad connection that you are suffering in your home or workplace.

How to change the IP of the Mac

As we have mentioned before, the IP is the number that identifies each computer or device on the Internet or in a network, and therefore, for the devices to be able to carry out and enjoy this connection, it is essential that they have their IP address. Well, this identification number can be obtained through two different ways.

First, it can be obtained automatically, in this way an address is assigned to the device using DHCP, which is a dynamic host configuration protocol. On the other hand, this assignment can be done manually. In this case, you will need your Internet access provider or network administrator to provide you with an IP address that you must enter in the Network panel of your Mac‘s System Preferences. The steps for this are as follows.

  1. On your Mac, open System Preferences.
  2. Click Network.
  3. Select the network connection you want to use from the list.
  4. Click on the “Configure IPv4” drop-down menu.
  5. Select Manually and enter the address in the IP Address field. Your ISP or network administrator most likely provided you with additional information such as the subnet mask, router address, and DNS server address. Enter the subnet mask and the router in the corresponding fields.
  6. To enter the DNS server address, you just have to click on Advanced and then on DNS, to finally click on the Add button and enter the address.