What Is My Default Gateway? How to Find It
Your default gateway is the device that forwards traffic from your network to everywhere else. On a home network it is almost always your router. When your computer wants to reach a server it cannot see locally, it hands the packet to the gateway, and the gateway sends it on.
Why it is called that
Your device keeps a small routing table. Addresses on your own network it delivers directly. For anything else there is one catch-all entry, the default route, pointing at the gateway. Without it, your device can reach your printer but not the internet.
Typical gateway addresses
It is a private address on your own network, most often one of these:
192.168.1.1and192.168.0.110.0.0.1and10.0.0.138192.168.1.254or192.168.100.1on some provider modems
How to find yours
- Windows: run
ipconfigin Command Prompt and read the Default Gateway line. - macOS: System Settings, then Network, then Details, then TCP/IP, and read the Router field.
- Linux: run
ip route | grep default. The address afterviais the gateway. - iPhone: Settings, then Wi-Fi, tap the (i) next to your network, and read Router.
- Android: Settings, then Wi-Fi, tap your network and read Gateway.
- PlayStation 5: Settings, then Network, then Connection Status, then View Connection Status.
Our step-by-step guide with screenshots of each menu is how to find your router's IP address, since on a home network the two are the same number.
Gateway, subnet mask and DNS: how they fit together
| Setting | What it decides | Example |
|---|---|---|
| IP address | Who this device is on the network | 192.168.1.42 |
| Subnet mask | Which addresses count as local | 255.255.255.0 |
| Default gateway | Where everything else is sent | 192.168.1.1 |
| DNS server | Who turns names into addresses | 1.1.1.1 |
The gateway must sit inside the range your subnet mask defines, or your device cannot reach it. Our subnet calculator shows that range for any address and prefix, and CIDR and subnet masks explained covers the arithmetic.
Your gateway is not your public IP address
The gateway is a private address that only exists inside your home. The address the internet sees belongs to the router's outside interface, and you can check it on our IP checker. If the address on your router's status page differs from the one we show, your provider is sharing one public address between several customers, which also blocks inbound connections. See public vs private IP addresses.
Troubleshooting
- No gateway listed. Your device did not get a DHCP lease. Reconnect to the network or restart the router.
- Gateway shows 0.0.0.0. Same cause: no working configuration was received.
- An address starting 169.254. Windows assigned itself a fallback address because DHCP failed entirely.
- Gateway responds but nothing loads. Local networking is fine and the fault is upstream, either DNS or your provider. Try our ping test and what is a DNS server.
- Two gateways. A second router behind the first creates double NAT, which breaks port forwarding until one is put into bridge mode.
Try it yourself
See the real numbers for your own connection with our free tools.