Access your computers external IP address from your desktop without using a browser
Following on from yesterdays blog post about what can happen if you get given a new IP address and don't realise it, you might want a quick way to check your external IP address from your computer without having to open an Internet browser.
There are many "What is my IP address" sites about that show you your IP address plus other request headers such as the user-agent but you might want a quick way of seeing your external IP without having to open a browser first.
If you are using a LINUX computer it's pretty easy to use CURL or WGET to write a small script to scrape an IP checker page and return the HTML contents.
For instance in a command prompt this will return you the IP address using CURL by scraping the contents of icanhazip.com.
This site is good because it outputs the computers IP address that's accessing the URL in plain text so it means you don't have to do any reformatting at all.
However if you are on a Windows computer there is no simple way of getting your external IP address (the IP address your computer is seen on the outside world) without either installing Windows versions of CURL or WGET first or writing a script to do it for you using Microsoft objects.
Of course it would be nice if you could just use ipconfig from the command prompt to show your external address as well as your internal network details but unfortunately you can't do that.
As you're connected to the Internet through your router your PC isn't directly connected to the Internet.
Therefore there is no easy way you can get the IP address your ISP has assigned to your computer without seeing it from another computer on the Internet.
Therefore you can either use one of the many IP checker tools like whatismyip.com or icanhazip.com to get the details. Or you can even just click this link to search for "what is my IP address" and get Google to show you your IP address above the results.
However if you do want to do it without a browser you can write a simple VBS script to do it for you and then you can access your external IP from your desktop with a simple double click of the mouse.
How to make a VBS Script to get your computers external IP address.
If you really want to use this from the command line you can do it by following these steps.
So there you go, a LINUX and WINDOWS way of accessing your external IP address from your desktop without having to open Chrome or FireFox.
Following on from yesterdays blog post about what can happen if you get given a new IP address and don't realise it, you might want a quick way to check your external IP address from your computer without having to open an Internet browser.
There are many "What is my IP address" sites about that show you your IP address plus other request headers such as the user-agent but you might want a quick way of seeing your external IP without having to open a browser first.
If you are using a LINUX computer it's pretty easy to use CURL or WGET to write a small script to scrape an IP checker page and return the HTML contents.
For instance in a command prompt this will return you the IP address using CURL by scraping the contents of icanhazip.com.
This site is good because it outputs the computers IP address that's accessing the URL in plain text so it means you don't have to do any reformatting at all.
curl icanhazip.comHowever if you are on a Windows computer there is no simple way of getting your external IP address (the IP address your computer is seen on the outside world) without either installing Windows versions of CURL or WGET first or writing a script to do it for you using Microsoft objects.
Of course it would be nice if you could just use ipconfig from the command prompt to show your external address as well as your internal network details but unfortunately you can't do that.
As you're connected to the Internet through your router your PC isn't directly connected to the Internet.
Therefore there is no easy way you can get the IP address your ISP has assigned to your computer without seeing it from another computer on the Internet.
Therefore you can either use one of the many IP checker tools like whatismyip.com or icanhazip.com to get the details. Or you can even just click this link to search for "what is my IP address" and get Google to show you your IP address above the results.
However if you do want to do it without a browser you can write a simple VBS script to do it for you and then you can access your external IP from your desktop with a simple double click of the mouse.
How to make a VBS Script to get your computers external IP address.
- Open notepad.
- Copy and paste the following VBS code into a new notepad window.
- Save the file as "whatismyip.vbs" on to your desktop.
- To view your IP address just double click the file icon and a Windows message box will open and show you the IP address.
Option Explicit
Dim objHTTP : Set objHTTP = WScript.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXmlHttp")
objHTTP.Open "GET", "http://icanhazip.com", False
objHTTP.Send
Wscript.Echo objHTTP.ResponseText
Set objHTTP = NothingIf you really want to use this from the command line you can do it by following these steps.
- Open a command prompt.
- Type "cscript " leaving a space afterwards (and without the quotes!).
- Drag the whatismyip.vbs file to the command prompt so that you have a space between cscript and the path of the file e.g C:\Documents and Settings\myname>cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs"
- Hit Enter.
- The IP address will appear after some guff about the Windows Script Host Version.
The output should look something like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\ myname >cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs" Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.7 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. 89.42.212.239
So there you go, a LINUX and WINDOWS way of accessing your external IP address from your desktop without having to open Chrome or FireFox.
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