How To Find Ip Address Of A Device On Network

How do you find the IP accost of your router, wireless printer, other computers and devices on your network. How exercise you spot devices that shouldn't be on your network? Apply these tools.

Computers work with IP addresses rather than the names and URLs that people use. Your computer has an IP accost, your router has an IP address, a NAS (network attached storage) drive has an IP address, even wireless printers have IP addresses. How practice you find out the IP addresses of devices when y'all need to know them?

Why y'all need device IP addresses

Why would you need to know the the IP addresses of computers and devices on the network? At that place are several reasons, for example, suppose yous want to configure the router on your home or work Wi-Fi network or wired LAN, check its settings, encounter whether it is working properly, alter the Wi-Fi aqueduct or check error logs.

The manner to access it is to enter its IP address into the accost box of a web browser. It then displays the router's dwelling house page and login form. Once logged in you tin change the settings, but what is the router's IP address?

Y'all might want to ping a device to check that information technology is responding. For example, if you lot endeavor to print something and nothing happens or the computer cannot encounter the printer, yous tin can ping information technology. This means sending a standard message, a sort of "Hello, are you lot at that place?" The device responds with the equivalent of "Yes, I am."

Pinging really sends packets of network data rather than text messages and checks the network packets returned, but the effect is the same. If you want to know whether your wireless printer is OK you can ping it, just only if you know its IP address.

Observe device IP addresses in Windows

So how practice you lot observe the IP address of devices? There is more 1 method and the first is straightforward. Open an Explorer window and select Network in the left pane. This shows NAS drives (often in the Media Devices section), computers, your router (under Network Infrastructure), and printers:

Show network devices in Explorer in Windows 10

Correct click whatsoever of these devices and select Properties from the menu that is displayed. Here is a typical Properties window and it is for the BT Dwelling house Hub router listed above.

The properties window for a network device in Windows

If you are wondering what the Device web folio URL is for in the properties window, information technology is a link to testify information about the device or to access its settings. This router is 192.168.1.254 and clicking the link opens the router's homepage with access to information and settings.

If the IP address in the Properties window is weird, clicking the Device web page link shows the device information or settings and from there you lot can see the IP address.

Other network devices accept a similar properties windows. The IP address of the device is shown or can exist accessed from the Device web folio. This is handy for routers, NAS drives and other devices that are configured through a web browser.

Notice your PC's IP address

I thing you tin can't practice is to right click your own calculator and get a similar backdrop window. We need to use some other technique.

Hold down the Windows fundamental and press R to open the Run window. Enter cmd and the command prompt window opens. At the command prompt, enter ipconfig /all

The ipconfig command at the Windows command prompt shows network information

This displays a lot of information, but the important one is the IPv4 Accost on the active network adapter – the Wireless LAN adapter WiFi in the screenshot above. There are probably multiple network adapters, such every bit Wi-Fi and Ethernet for wired and wireless connections.

The Default Gateway in the listing above is the router. If you want to access the router, type those numbers into a spider web browser. My router is 192.168.1.254 but yours could be unlike.

Ping network devices

Now that we have some IP addresses for devices on the network, allow's ping the router to make certain it is OK. We discovered that the IP address is 192.168.ane.254 in the Properties window. So at the command prompt we ping that address:

Ping network devices to make sure they are working

The important line is the one that says Packets: Sent=4, Received=4, Lost=0. If the device was faulty then packets would be lost, they would take a long time, and so on. Information technology might even say 'Destination unreachable'. Yous tin run into that this device is OK.

View the properties for a wireless printer and become the IP address (go to the device web folio if necessary) and so ping it. If the printer is powered on and working OK, ping will written reportPackets: Sent=4, Received=4, Lost=0.It won't tell y'all if there is a paper jam of grade, but information technology at least tests whether it is responding on the network.

Get IP addresses from the router

Routers demand to know the IP addresses of devices on the network so that they can communicate with them, allow them to access the internet and other network devices. It is therefore an excellent place to look for devices and IP addresses.

Blazon the router's IP address into a browser. Yous probably need to login with a username and password. This may be on the base of the router or the documentation provided with it.

A router can list all the network devices attached

The menus, features and interface of routers differs from model to model, so I cannot say exactly what to click or where to go. Somewhere is a list of devices with the IP addresses and you can see mine above. The device proper name is listed and you can easily see the IP addresses.

Watch the network

Ane final way to detect the IP addresses of network devices is to utilise a free utility called Wireless Network Watcher. It constantly scans the network and queries the devices found to discover the name, IP accost and other information.

Wireless Network Watcher for Windows shows devices on the network

Information technology constantly scans and so the list changes when devices are turned on or off or connect to the network. This makes it easy to identify unknown devices because you tin plough them off so on and see which IP address disappears and so reappears.

Knowing how to discover IP addresses of devices on your network is useful and it can be used to solve problems. If you manually allocate IP addresses rather than letting the network automatically assign them, information technology is even more essential to know how to check what device is using which IP accost.