What’s My IP Address? And How to Exclude it from Google Analytics

Douglas Karr

Saturday, January 7, 2023

IPv4: Your IP Address is 44.200.117.166 (hex notation: 2cc875a6).

IPv6: We were unable to detect an IPv6 address.

What is an IP Address?

An IP is a standard defining how devices on a network communicate with each other using numerical addresses.

IPv4 is the original version of the Internet Protocol, which was first developed in the 1970s. It uses 32-bit addresses, which allows for a total of approximately 4.3 billion unique addresses. IPv4 is still widely used today, but it is running out of available addresses due to the rapid growth of the internet. An IPv4 address is a 32-bit numerical address that consists of four octets (8-bit blocks) separated by periods. The following is a valid IPv4 address (e.g. 192.168.1.1). They can be written in hexadecimal notation as well. (e.g. 0xC0A80101)
IPv6 is a newer version of the Internet Protocol that was developed to address the shortage of available IPv4 addresses. It uses 128-bit addresses, which allows for a virtually unlimited number of unique addresses. IPv6 is gradually being adopted as more devices are connected to the internet and the demand for unique addresses increases. An IPv6 address is a 128-bit numerical address that consists of eight 16-bit blocks separated by colons. For example, the following is a valid IPv6 address (e.g. 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 or using shorthand notation 2001:db8:85a3::8a2e:370:7334).

Both IPv4 and IPv6 are used to route data packets over the internet, but they are not compatible with each other. Some devices may support both versions of the protocol, while others may only support one or the other.

When Do You Need To Know Your IP Address?

Sometimes that you need your IP address. A couple of examples are whitelisting some security settings or filtering out traffic in Google Analytics. Keep in mind that an IP address that a web server sees is not your internal network IP address, it’s the IP address of the network that you’re on. As a result, changing wireless networks will produce a new IP address.

Many Internet service providers do not assign businesses or homes a static (unchanging) IP address. Some services expire and reassign IP addresses all the time.

To exclude internal traffic from appearing in a Google Analytics report view, create a custom filter to exclude your specific IP address: