My IP Address Explained: Location, ISP, ASN and More

My IP is the quickest way to see what your internet connection tells every website you visit. That includes your public IP address, the area it appears to come from, the provider and network that own it, and how your browser connected. Open the ipcomet IP checker and you get all of it on one page. This guide goes through each line of that result, what it means, where it comes from and how far you can trust it.

If you only want to know which of your addresses is "the" IP address, start with what is my IP address. This page is about everything that comes with it.

What does a "my IP" result show?

The ipcomet home page groups your result into four parts. Every value is worked out from the request your browser just made, and nothing is stored.

Group	Fields	How reliable
Address	IPv4, IPv6, IP version	Exact: this is the address our server saw
Location	City, country, postal code, timezone, coordinates	Approximate: country is usually right, city often is not
Network	ISP, ASN, network type, hostname	ISP and ASN are reliable; network type is a best guess
Connection	Protocol, encryption, edge location, latency to edge	Exact for this one request

My IP address: the IPv4 and IPv6 lines

The big number at the top is your public IPv4 address, such as 203.0.113.42, and the line below it shows your IPv6 address if your connection has one. "IP version" says which of the two your browser used to reach us. Both are exact: they are the addresses the request arrived from, not a lookup.

If you see an address you do not recognise, the usual reasons are a VPN or proxy, mobile data instead of Wi-Fi, or a provider that shares one address between customers. What is my IP address explains each case.

My IP location: city, postal code and coordinates

The location is an estimate. It does not come from GPS or your device. It comes from geolocation databases that map blocks of IP addresses to places, and ipcomet reads it from Cloudflare's own geolocation data for the address you connected from. That is why the result page says the location "often points to your ISP's nearest hub instead of your home".

Country is usually right, because address blocks are registered to organisations in a specific country.
City and region are often the city where your provider routes traffic, which can be a neighbouring town or, on mobile data, a city hundreds of kilometres away.
Postal code and coordinates describe a point for the whole area. They are not your house, and two neighbours on the same provider can see the same coordinates.

Networks can publish where their addresses are used in a "geofeed", a format defined in RFC 8805, and database providers can use it to correct their data. If your location is wrong, our guide to why your IP location is wrong explains how to report it. To check any other address, use the IP lookup.

Timezone

The timezone is shown as a name from the IANA Time Zone Database, such as Asia/Kolkata or Europe/Berlin. That database records the history of local time, including offsets and daylight saving rules, for representative locations worldwide. Websites use it to show times in your local zone. It is derived from the estimated location, so it is right whenever the country and region are.

My ISP and ASN

The ISP line names the organisation that holds the block your address belongs to. For a home connection that is your internet provider. For a VPN, a company network or a cloud server it is the operator of that network, which is why a VPN user often sees a hosting company here.

The ASN is that network's autonomous system number. RFC 1930 defines an autonomous system as a connected group of IP prefixes run by one or more network operators under a single routing policy. IANA hands out pools of addresses and AS numbers to the five regional internet registries (AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC and RIPE NCC), which assign them to networks in their regions. One ASN can cover millions of customers, so it identifies your provider, not you. The ASN lookup shows who holds any AS number and which prefixes it announces, and what is my ISP covers the provider side in more detail.

Network type

Network type is ipcomet's best guess at what kind of network owns the address: a residential or mobile provider, a hosting company or data center, or a VPN service. It is based on who owns the address block and on hints in its hostname, so treat it as a strong clue rather than proof.

Some sites score visitors by the kind of network their address comes from, so this line can explain why a VPN triggers extra checks. The IP reputation check goes further and tests whether your address is a known Tor exit or appears on public blocklists, and is my VPN working shows how to use these signals to test a VPN.

Hostname

The hostname is the reverse DNS name of your address, also called a PTR record. Your provider sets it, and it often contains clues such as a city code, the word "dynamic" or part of your address. Many home connections have none, so an empty hostname is normal. Our guide to reverse DNS explains why mail servers check it, and the reverse DNS tool looks up the hostname for any address.

Connection: protocol, encryption, edge location and latency

These four lines describe how your browser reached ipcomet, not your IP address itself.

Protocol is the HTTP version your browser used, usually HTTP/2 (RFC 9113) or HTTP/3 (RFC 9114). HTTP/3 runs over QUIC, which recovers lost data per stream, so one lost packet does not hold up every other request the way it can with HTTP/2 over TCP.
Encryption shows the TLS version and cipher, such as TLS 1.3, the current version defined in RFC 8446.
Edge location is the Cloudflare data center that answered. Cloudflare names data centers after the IATA code of a nearby major airport, so FRA is Frankfurt and MRS is Marseille.
Latency to edge is the round-trip time between you and that data center, in milliseconds.

The edge is not always the nearest one. Cloudflare announces the same addresses from many data centers, and your provider's routing and peering decide which one receives your request. In a test from India on 30 October 2026 our request was answered by MRS, Marseille, at 131 to 174 milliseconds, a data center in France. If your latency looks high, the ping test measures it properly over many samples, and what is ping explains what counts as good.

What my IP does not reveal

Your IP result does not show your name, your street address, your email or what you browse. A website sees the same public address for everyone behind your router. Only your provider can link an address to a customer account, and it normally does so only when the law requires it.

What websites can add on top of your IP is everything your browser sends with each request. What your browser reveals covers that side, and can someone track you by your IP address covers the realistic risks.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my IP show a different city?

The city comes from a database of address blocks, and it often names the city where your provider connects you to the internet. On mobile data that can be far away. The address itself is still correct.

Is my IP location my real location?

No. It is an estimate for the area your address belongs to. The postal code and coordinates are a point for that area, not your home.

What does the AS number on my IP mean?

It identifies the network that owns your address, usually your internet provider. Millions of customers can share one AS number.

Why is my hostname empty?

Your provider has not set a reverse DNS name for your address. That is common on home connections and does not affect browsing.

Does ipcomet keep a record of my IP?

No. The result is worked out for your request and shown back to you, and ipcomet's own code does not store or log the addresses it sees. The privacy policy and the About page list where each piece of data comes from.

Sources and further reading

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