IP address?

[Alan H]

If I put the mouse cursor over the little monitor pic under my name, it shows what I assume to be my IP address. So how come it shows a different number on each thread/post? I generally only ever use two PCs - one at home and one at work. Very rarely another one at work, but not for quite some time. So how's the number jobby work then?
It even shows different numbers on consecutive posts (on different threads.)
Bah, humbug!

Just noticed, there isn't even a monitor thingy here. Wonder if it's just on "Soft Roaders" then?

[Bryan]

You access your web through freeserve webcache, so its the webcache that connects to this site and not you. Webcaches often have several IP's they use for outgoing fetches.

[Alan H]

Does this happen with other servers then? I thought that as a "web user" a person had one ip address unless they used a different server (as I do at work) on the company intranet.

[toiletduck]

with most internet services (and all cable broadband services) you are dynamically assigned an ip when you connect, only some services give you a static ip address and usually if you want one you have to specifically ask for it.

[Alan H]

Cheers for the info peeps.

[olo]

well, when you connect as said previously you assigned an ip at random from the ISP's IP Spool, if you need a specific IP its usually binded to your username on request (plus a charge), and in the case of a bridge connection u'd need at least 4 IP's (broadcast IP etc.)

as mentioned previously too, it could be a web cache server, the purpose of these servers is to "save" sites to avoid using the bandwith... simply put in an example scenario... imagine your isp is called TestNet and it buys bandwith off BT... it will buy off BT an allocated amount per second. now.... lets say it buys only 30 mbit, then it means it can hold only 60 users at full speed, so to save such money (i.e. not to buy more bandwith) and as a consequence they can accept more users on the system, theirfore more money... they'd use technologies such as web cache servers, QoS (Quality of Service) etc. the cache server's job is simply to "save" a website (usually) so the next time someone else loads that same website, all it does is open an HTTP GET and it gets only the size of the page and if its the same then it just loads up the page for you from the cache server, this way you see it come up faster, and they save the bandwith that they would have to buy since the cache server only used a couple of bytes only to get the size of the html file.

then you have another commonly used technology called QoS (Quality of Service) this is basically a set of rules set on ports (imagine it as a door that a program uses, like a web server uses port 80), on protocols (the language that the computers are gonna be talking on, usually the most commonly used are TCP & UDP) and even on data packet headers. these rules basically would say somethin of the sort in simple english "if the user is downloading any P2P download then cap to 2kb/sec" - this would be a data packet header rule. then a limit on a web download would be "if the user is downloading from a Port 80 request using TCP protocol then cap to 30 kb/sec" - this is a port/protocol cap. this slows down a user to be able to give other users more speed. usually web protocols get full priority in such systems.

hope i explained enough and u understood lol, and hope i didn't bug you :P

[Alan H]

Oh, yes Mr. Falcon. I understand all right!
Genuinely thanks for taking the time to explain Olo, and you definitely aren't bugging me. I hope you are lookig after Dennis from Sliema. Pity I couldn't have met up with a few more while I was in Gozo and Malta this year.
All this is interesting stuff. The only problem that I have is that when I learn something new, something old has to go because MY cache is full and I can't expand or upgrade it. This hasn't been a problem so far, but I must be getting towards the stuff that I learned at 15 or 16 soon so I might start to forget things that I still need. I reckon I'm going to have to get a tattoo of MY name soon so as I can remember who I am!

[olo]

no probs alan, yea we do take care of dennis :P we take care of each other ;) how can we leave such a poser unguarded? even with a tourist he had to pose! (al, re-post his pics of when u were here :D )

[nighthawk]

Well Alan, you do have some useless stuff in your cache....
like why not learn all this interesting IP Addressing stuff and chuck out your useless diesel ideas? :D

[Alan H]

Post the "Dennis pic" again? No I couldn't, No. Really. Oh allright then.
Here it is
http://www.landrovernet.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15935
Just be careful - at least he came to see me. He may have pics of you.

I have already deleted all the non petrol info from my cache - there was only about 2.187209664 bytes released though. I tend not to keep info of that sort. Haaaakkk, ptooee!