IP address question (1 Viewer)

[Todd H]

Hey guys and gals.

I have a question about IP addresses. I recently helped a friend at work sign up for a message board. I also frequent this board and figured she would enjoy chatting with the people there. After a few posts, they ban both of us because we have the same IP address and assume we are the same person. Is it possible that our IP addresses would be the same outside our work network? Thanks.

 

[Tekara]

If they only matched on the first three groupings in the IP (provider / location) then it's possible. As in you both live in the same general area and use the same internet provider. But that's not that uncommon, so I can't imagine any filtering software setup in such a fashion. . . though that doesn't really account for the "human factor."

 

[Dave Gorman]

How do you mean that? That your IP address and your friend's IP address, when accessing the board FROM work, would appear the same to someone OUTSIDE of your work? If that's then case, then yes. Depending on your office's internet access configuration, the entire office likely accesses the internet through a single IP address.

If by "outside our work network" you mean that each of you is accessing from your own home internet connection, then no, your IP addresses could be close (as Tekara pointed out) but not identical.

If the first option is the case, perhaps you could email the board's management to explain that while you and your friend are accessing the board from the same IP address (due to accessing from the same LAN), you are indeed two different individuals.

 

[Todd H]

We both post from work and our computers are on the same network. Could that be the reason?

 

[Todd H]

That's how we are accessing the board. She is a couple of computers down from me.

I e-mailed the Administrator and explained, but he hasn't replied. Hopefully I can clear this up as I've been a member since the late 90's.

 

[Hanson]

If you are on the the same network, then you only have one unique address going out to the internet.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Actually, you could either have separate external addresses or you could have the same. It depends entirely on how things are set up.

However, these days, by far the most common setup is one using NAT, for Network Address Translation. This means that your firewall has only one external IP address, for example, 123.456.789.123. However, on your network on the inside, you have one address per computer - 192.168.0.5 and 192.168.0.6 for instance. The firewall then keeps track of which machine on the inside made what requests and translates from the internal IP address to the external one - and thus all traffic from every workstation at your job appears to come from just one IP.

You could also have one IP per workstation, and the firewall and router just passed those through. This is getting quite uncommon these days, although it is still the way it is with servers in most cases, as each server does need its own public "real" IP number.

Also, whoever runs that board should wake up and smell the coffee. These days, it is hardly uncommon to have multiple visitors from the same IP. All it would take is having two people in a house sharing their Internet connection but both interested in that board and visiting it simultaneously.

 

[Todd H]

Thanks for all the help. The owners of the board are ignoring my e-mails, which means I'm permanently banned I suppose. Too bad as I've been a member since the 90's. I guess I'll just have to spend more time here.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I think that someone needs to email them this page!

Glenn

 

[Todd H]

I might try that. Thanks.

 

[Jeff_CusBlues]

Todd. This is your boss. Quit posting on message boards and get back to work!!!!

 

[Todd H]

LOL!!! Nice.

 

[Keith Paynter]

This appears to be the case. Depending how you business network is set up, your computers may have their own IP address for network intranet, but your internet source will be shared as the same IP on all your machines courtesy of your company's router/firewall. This is what our workplace does.

If you want to confirm this, both of you should go to a network address identifier site like whatismyip.com. It will echo back your internet's IP address, and if they all come back the same, that is indeed what caused you to be kicked off - multiple accounts with the same IP.