Each website on the internet has at least one Internet Protocol address assigned to it. Knowing a website's IP address can be useful to:

• Bypass website-blocking tools
• Block specific sites, such as when administering a home network
• Narrow the geographic location of a web server

Finding IP addresses can be complicated. Web browsers don't usually display them. Furthermore, large websites use a pool of IP addresses rather than just one, meaning that the address used one day might change the next. Two people in different parts of the world often obtain different IP addresses for the same site even if they use the same lookup methods.

The ping utility looks up IP addresses of websites and any other kind of running network device. Ping attempts to contact the site by name and reports back the IP address it finds, along with other information about the connection. Ping is a Command Prompt command in Windows. For example, to find the IP address of Example.com on a desktop computer, use the command line interface instead of the graphical interface, and enter the command:

ping example.com

The command returns a result similar to the following, which contains the IP address:

Pinging example.com [​151.101.193.121] with 32 bytes of data: . . .

Both the Google Play and Apple App stores contain many apps that can generate these same pings from a mobile device.

Many large websites do not return connection information in response to ping commands as a security measure, but you can usually still obtain the site's IP address. The ping method fails if the website is temporarily unreachable or if the computer used to perform the ping is not connected to the internet.

An alternative method for finding website IP addresses relies on the internet WHOIS system. WHOIS is a database that tracks website registration information including owners and IP addresses.

To look up website IP addresses with WHOIS, simply visit one of the many public sites such as whois.net or networksolutions.com that offer WHOIS database query services. Searching for a particular site name produces a result similar to the following:

Current Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
IP Address: 207.241.148.80 (ARIN & RIPE IP search) . . .

In the WHOIS method, the IP addresses are stored statically in a database and therefore do not require the website to be online or reachable over the internet.

WhatsMyIPAddress.com is a popular website that lets you look up your own public IP address. It also has a simple tool to let you look up the IP of websites. Open your browser and visit the site. Searching is as simple as entering the name of the site you want into the search field and running the search. You'll instantly see the IP addresses used by your site.

Popular websites publish their IP address information, which is accessible through standard web searches — so if you are looking for an IP address for Facebook, for example, you can find it online with a simple search.