In 2024, automated bot traffic surpassed human-generated traffic on the internet for the first time in a decade. According to Imperva's 2025 Bad Bot Report, 51% of all web traffic is now non-human — crawlers, scrapers, credential stuffers, and AI training bots hammering servers around the clock. That means more than half the IP addresses hitting your website, API, or login page belong to something that never blinks.

Every one of those connections carries an IP address. And every IP address carries information: where the traffic originates, which network operates it, whether it belongs to a residential ISP or a cloud hosting provider, and whether that address has a history of malicious activity. The ability to look up an IP address and extract that intelligence is one of the most fundamental skills in network security, fraud prevention, and web operations.

This guide covers everything you need to know about IP address lookups — from the basics of what IP addresses are to advanced techniques that combine geolocation, WHOIS, reputation, and ASN data into a complete picture. Whether you are a security analyst investigating an intrusion, a developer building location-aware software, or someone who just wants to understand what information their IP address exposes, this is the reference you need.

What Is an IP Address? A Quick Primer

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a numerical label assigned to every device connected to a network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. It serves two purposes: identifying the host or network interface and providing the location of the host in the network topology so traffic can be routed to it.

Think of it as a return address on an envelope. Every time your device sends a request to a website, it includes your IP address so the server knows where to send the response. Without it, the internet cannot function.

IPv4 vs. IPv6

There are two versions of IP addresses currently in use, and the differences matter for lookup purposes.

IPv4 uses 32-bit addresses written as four decimal numbers separated by dots (e.g., 192.168.1.1). There are approximately 4.3 billion possible IPv4 addresses, and all blocks have been allocated by the five Regional Internet Registries. IPv4 addresses are extremely well-cataloged in geolocation databases because they have been in use since the 1980s.

IPv6 uses 128-bit addresses written as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by colons (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334). The address space is astronomically larger — 340 undecillion addresses, enough to assign a unique address to every atom on the surface of the Earth and still have addresses left over. IPv6 adoption is growing steadily, and geolocation database coverage for IPv6 addresses improves with each update cycle.

Public vs. private IP addresses

Not all IP addresses are routable on the public internet. Private IP ranges — 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, and 192.168.0.0/16 — are reserved for use within local networks. Your home router, for example, might assign your laptop 192.168.1.42 internally, but the IP address that websites see is the public IP assigned by your ISP. When you run an IP address lookup, it is the public IP that returns meaningful geolocation and network data.

Static vs. dynamic IP addresses

A static IP remains the same every time you connect. Servers, business connections, and premium residential plans typically use static IPs. A dynamic IP is assigned from a pool each time your router connects to the ISP. Most residential internet connections use dynamic IPs, which means the same person might have different IP addresses on different days. This is important context for IP lookups: a lookup result reflects who is assigned that IP right now, not necessarily who had it yesterday.

What an IP Address Lookup Reveals (And What It Doesn't)

Understanding what an IP lookup can and cannot tell you is the difference between using the tool effectively and drawing wrong conclusions.

What a lookup does reveal

For a deeper look at how these accuracy numbers break down by region and ISP type, see our detailed accuracy analysis.

What a lookup does not reveal

• The identity of the person using the IP — an IP address belongs to a network, not a person. Only the ISP knows which subscriber is assigned a given IP at a given time.
• An exact street address — geolocation returns city-level or neighborhood-level estimates, not building numbers or apartment units.
• Browsing history or personal data — an IP lookup tells you about the network, not about the traffic that has flowed through it.
• The actual location of VPN or proxy users — if someone routes through a VPN server in Amsterdam, the lookup shows Amsterdam, regardless of where the user physically sits.

How to Look Up an IP Address with InfoSniper

The process takes seconds, but knowing what to look for in the results makes the difference between a glance and an investigation.

Step-by-step lookup

1. Go to infosniper.net — the IP lookup form is on the homepage. Your own IP address and its location are displayed automatically when you visit.
2. Enter the IP address you want to look up. Both IPv4 (e.g., 8.8.8.8) and IPv6 (e.g., 2001:4860:4860::8888) formats are supported.
3. Review the results — the page displays an interactive map with a pin at the estimated coordinates, plus detailed data panels showing country, region, city, ISP, AS number, timezone, and additional metadata.
4. Use the map — zoom in and out to contextualize the pin location. The marker represents the geolocation database's best estimate for this IP block, typically a city center or ISP facility. For more on interpreting map results, see our IP location map guide.
5. Check additional data — scroll down for WHOIS information, connection type, and other metadata that adds context beyond the geographic coordinates.

# Look up any IP directly by visiting:
https://www.infosniper.net/?ip_address=8.8.8.8

# For programmatic access, use the JSON API:
curl "https://www.infosniper.net/json.php?k=YOUR_KEY&ip_address=8.8.8.8"

# Or the XML API:
curl "https://www.infosniper.net/xml.php?k=YOUR_KEY&ip_address=8.8.8.8"

For programmatic lookups, the InfoSniper API returns the same data in JSON or XML format, making it straightforward to integrate IP lookup into security dashboards, fraud detection pipelines, or analytics platforms.

Bulk lookups

If you have more than a handful of addresses to investigate — server logs, firewall alerts, transaction records — pasting them one at a time is impractical. The Bulk IP Upload tool accepts up to 100 IP addresses per batch and returns full geolocation data for all of them. Our bulk IP lookup guide covers the workflow in detail, including API-driven automation for larger volumes.

Understanding Your Lookup Results

Every field in an IP lookup result tells a different part of the story. Here is what each data point means in practice and when it matters.

Geographic fields

Country and country code — the most reliable field. Country-level geolocation achieves 95-99% accuracy across all major databases. For compliance checks (sanctions screening, content licensing, regulatory restrictions), this is often the only field you need.

Region/state and city — useful but less reliable, especially for mobile IPs and users in regions with sparse ISP infrastructure. City-level accuracy ranges from 80-90% in the US and Western Europe to 50-60% in parts of Africa and Southeast Asia. Our accuracy breakdown covers the nuances by region.

Latitude and longitude — the coordinates placed on the map. These represent the geographic center of the area associated with the IP, not a precise building location. In urban areas, the coordinates might be within a few kilometers of the actual user. In rural areas served by distant ISP nodes, they could be 50+ kilometers off.

Network fields

ISP (Internet Service Provider) — reveals who operates the network for this IP range. This single field often tells you the most about an IP address: Comcast means a residential US user, Amazon Technologies means a cloud-hosted server, T-Mobile USA means a mobile user. For security analysis, distinguishing residential, hosting, and mobile IPs is critical.

AS Number (Autonomous System Number) — a unique identifier for the network that routes this IP range. Security teams use AS numbers to track patterns across IP ranges: if multiple suspicious IPs share the same AS number, they belong to the same network. This is particularly useful for identifying botnet infrastructure or tracking abuse patterns across IP ranges that might span different geographic locations.

Connection type — categorizes the IP as residential, business, hosting, mobile, or other types. This classification feeds directly into fraud scoring algorithms. A login attempt from a hosting IP (a server) raises different questions than one from a residential IP.

Supplementary fields

Timezone — sometimes more useful than the city name. If a user claims to be in New York but their IP resolves to a timezone of UTC+3, that discrepancy is worth investigating. Timezone data is also valuable for scheduling communications and understanding when traffic patterns peak.

WHOIS data — provides the registration information for the IP block: the organization that controls it, administrative contacts, abuse contacts, and the date the block was allocated. For a full walkthrough of WHOIS interpretation, see our WHOIS IP lookup guide. You can also run WHOIS queries directly through InfoSniper's WHOIS lookup tool.

Finding Your Own IP Address

Every time you visit a website, your public IP address is visible to the server. Understanding what your own IP reveals is the first step in understanding the privacy implications of internet usage.

The simplest method: visit InfoSniper.net. Your public IP address is displayed automatically at the top of the page, along with its geolocation data, ISP, and network information. This is the IP address that every website, API, and online service you connect to can see.

What others can see about you

Anyone who has your IP address — which includes every website you visit, every email you send (in some email clients), and every peer in a P2P connection — can run the same lookup you would run on someone else's IP. They will see:

• Your approximate city and country
• Your ISP's name (e.g., "Verizon Fios" or "BT Group")
• Whether you are on a residential, business, or mobile connection
• The timezone associated with your connection

They will not see your name, your street address, your browsing history, or any personal information. The IP resolves to your ISP's infrastructure, not to your house.

# macOS / Linux
curl -s ifconfig.me

# Windows PowerShell
(Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://ifconfig.me").Content

# Alternative (returns JSON with details)
curl -s https://www.infosniper.net/json.php?k=YOUR_KEY

Public IP vs. local IP

Your computer also has a local (private) IP address on your home or office network — typically something like 192.168.1.x or 10.0.0.x. This address is only meaningful within your local network and is not visible to external websites. When people talk about "looking up an IP address," they mean the public IP.

IP Lookup for Different Use Cases

The same data serves very different purposes depending on who is looking and why.

Security professionals

For SOC analysts, incident responders, and penetration testers, IP lookup is a core part of the investigation workflow. When a firewall logs a connection attempt from an unknown IP, the first question is always: where is this coming from, and who operates the network?

Combining geolocation with IP reputation data adds another layer. If an IP has been flagged for spam, brute-force attacks, or botnet activity, that context changes the response priority. Our IP reputation guide covers how reputation scoring works and how to interpret the results.

For analyzing multiple IPs from a single incident — DDoS source IPs, brute-force attempt origins, or suspicious access patterns — bulk lookup provides the geographic and network distribution in one pass.

Website owners and administrators

Understanding where your traffic comes from at the IP level gives you intelligence that analytics tools abstract away. If your server logs show a spike of requests from a single ASN, that is either a popular network among your audience or a bot crawling your site. The ISP and connection type fields from an IP lookup distinguish between the two instantly.

IP lookup also supports access control decisions. If your service is only licensed for users in specific countries, server-side IP geolocation provides the check. If you are seeing suspicious login attempts, mapping the source IPs reveals whether the attempts are geographically concentrated (suggesting a targeted attack) or globally distributed (suggesting a botnet).

Regular users

Common reasons non-technical users look up IP addresses: checking what information their own IP exposes, identifying the source of suspicious emails or messages, understanding why a website thinks they are in the wrong location, or verifying whether a VPN is working correctly (the lookup should show the VPN server's location, not their real one).

Developers

Developers use IP lookup to build location-aware applications without requiring GPS permission. The InfoSniper API returns structured geolocation data in JSON or XML format, enabling server-side location detection for content customization, analytics enrichment, fraud scoring, and compliance checks. This is the approach used by most e-commerce platforms, ad networks, and content delivery systems.

Advanced Lookup Techniques

A basic IP lookup returns geolocation data. Combining multiple data sources produces intelligence that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Layering geolocation + WHOIS + reputation

Each lookup type answers a different question. Geolocation tells you where an IP is. WHOIS tells you who controls it. Reputation data tells you whether it has been involved in malicious activity. Running all three on the same IP gives you a complete profile:

# Step 1: Geolocation — where is it?
IP: 185.220.101.34
Country: Germany | City: Berlin | ISP: Zwiebelfreunde e.V.
Connection Type: Hosting

# Step 2: WHOIS — who operates it?
Organization: Zwiebelfreunde e.V. (Tor relay operator)
CIDR: 185.220.101.0/24 | AS: AS205100

# Step 3: Reputation — is it flagged?
Blacklisted: Yes (3 lists) | Type: Tor Exit Node
Abuse Reports: 847 in last 30 days

# Conclusion: Known Tor exit node. Traffic from this IP
# is anonymized — the real user could be anywhere.
# Treat as untrusted but not necessarily malicious.

Pattern analysis across multiple IPs

Individual lookups are useful, but the real power emerges when you analyze groups of IPs together. If your server logs show 50 failed SSH login attempts from different IPs, running them through a bulk lookup reveals whether they share the same ASN (suggesting a single botnet), whether they all originate from the same country (suggesting a targeted attack from one region), or whether they span dozens of countries (suggesting distributed credential stuffing).

The geographic and network clustering of attack traffic fundamentally changes the appropriate response. A regional attack might be addressed with geographic blocking. A distributed botnet requires rate limiting and behavioral analysis. The IP lookup data tells you which situation you are dealing with.

Tracking IP address changes over time

For ongoing investigations, looking up the same IP at different times can reveal changes. An IP that was registered to a hosting company last month but now maps to a different organization may have been reassigned. IP blocks frequently change hands in the secondary market, and geolocation databases update on varying schedules. Our IP tracker guide covers tools and techniques for monitoring IP addresses over time.

IPv4 vs. IPv6 Lookups: Practical Differences

Both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses can be looked up with the same tools, and the results return the same types of data. But there are practical differences worth understanding.

Geolocation accuracy

IPv4 addresses have been in use since the early internet. Decades of data collection, ISP reporting, and active measurement have made IPv4 geolocation databases extremely mature. Almost every IPv4 address in active use is mapped to at least a country, and most to a city.

IPv6 is newer. While major geolocation providers have been building IPv6 coverage aggressively — and accuracy for well-known IPv6 ranges (large ISPs, CDNs, cloud providers) is comparable to IPv4 — some recently allocated IPv6 blocks may have less precise location data. This gap narrows with every database update cycle, but it exists today.

Address assignment patterns

IPv4 addresses are scarce, which means they are recycled, reassigned, and shared (via CGNAT) frequently. This creates more opportunities for stale geolocation data. IPv6 addresses are abundant, so ISPs typically assign much larger blocks to individual subscribers. This can actually improve geolocation precision for IPv6 in some cases — if an ISP assigns a specific /56 block to a particular region, the entire block maps accurately.

Lookup format

From the user's perspective, the only difference is the format you type into the lookup tool. IPv4: 8.8.8.8. IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888. InfoSniper accepts both formats in the same input field — no need to use different tools.

Privacy Implications: What Your IP Address Reveals About You

Every internet connection exposes your IP address to the services you connect to. This is an inherent part of how the internet works — without a return address, the server cannot send data back to you. But the amount of information that can be derived from an IP address is worth understanding.

What your IP reveals

Your IP address exposes your approximate location (typically city level), your ISP, and the type of connection you use. Websites use this for legitimate purposes: serving content in your language, displaying prices in your currency, complying with regional content restrictions, and detecting suspicious login locations.

However, the same data can be used for less welcome purposes. Ad networks use IP geolocation for targeting. Data brokers correlate IP addresses with other data points to build user profiles. And anyone who obtains your IP (through email headers, P2P connections, or social engineering) can look up your general location and ISP.

How to limit what your IP reveals

• VPN (Virtual Private Network) — routes your traffic through a server in a different location, so websites see the VPN server's IP instead of yours. This is the most common privacy tool for masking IP-based location. However, not all VPNs are equal — some leak the original IP through WebRTC or DNS requests.
• Tor Network — routes traffic through multiple relay nodes, making it extremely difficult to trace back to the originating IP. Much slower than a VPN but provides stronger anonymization.
• Proxy servers — act as intermediaries, presenting their own IP to destination servers. Proxies vary widely in reliability and privacy: transparent proxies expose the original IP in headers, while elite proxies do not.
• Mobile data — mobile carriers use carrier-grade NAT, meaning your traffic shares a public IP with hundreds or thousands of other users. This provides some anonymity through volume, though the carrier still knows your identity.

Business implications

For businesses, IP-based intelligence is a double-edged tool. On one hand, it enables fraud detection, compliance, and analytics. On the other, customers are increasingly privacy-aware. According to Imperva's research, VPN usage has grown significantly in recent years, and approximately 31% of internet users worldwide have used a VPN — meaning nearly a third of the IPs you look up may not reflect the user's actual location.

The practical takeaway: IP lookup data is a signal, not a verdict. Use it alongside other data points (account history, device fingerprinting, behavioral patterns) rather than as a standalone decision-maker.