I have a friend in Ukraine who uses gotomypc.com for remote access to work on my computer here in California. Gotomypc records the IP address of each computer when connected. Is it possible that her connection would cause several different IP addresses to appear in gotomypc, even though she is operating from one computer and one connection? Or is that impossible and that different IP addresses definitely mean different computers?
I hate when I have to say this:
Maybe.
It depends on several things, but most importantly how your Ukrainian friend is connected to the internet.
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If your friend has been assigned a static IP address by her ISP, then I would expect to see only that IP address when she connects.
That's pretty simple, and unfortunately, probably the least likely scenario.
What's more likely is that she has what's called a "dynamic" IP address. That means that her ISP will automatically assign an IP address to her computer each time she connects to the internet. That IP address could be the same from one time to the next, or it could be quite different.
Even if she stays connected continuously, if she's getting a dynamic IP address, it can still change. Typically that's very infrequent, but it's completely at the whim of her ISP's networking equipment.
So is there anything you can tell about the situation?
I'd look at two things: how often you're seeing a different IP address, and how close (numerically) those IP addresses are to each other.
Say your friend connects to the internet once a day, and stays connected for several hours. It's likely, then, that you should see one IP address each day, though it might be different from day to day. If she connects and disconnects 10 times a day? Then you might see 10 different IP addresses. If she stays connected continuously, then I'd personally expect it to change no more than once a day. It could change more often, but I believe that would be rare.
Regardless of how often the IP address changed, it'd be interesting also to see if the IP addresses "relate" to one another. For example aaa.bbb.ccc.1 and aaa.bbb.ccc.2 - addresses that differ only in the lowest number - are likely to be from the same ISP. On the other hand, IP addresses that differ in the first number - 1.xxx.yyy.zzz and 2.xxx.yyy.zzz for example - rarely come from the same provider.
If the timing of the accesses matches your friends access, one additional concrete step you can take is to visit the ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) "whois" lookup (whois.arin.net) to look up the ISP that owns each specific IP address you're seeing. If they all belong to the same ISP, then I'd be more confident that the accesses are probably from the same computer. Certainly if they do not come from the same ISP, I'd start to get concerned.
Related:
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Ask Leo! - What can people tell from my IP address?
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Ask Leo! - How is my IP address assigned?
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Ask Leo! - Can I get someone's name and address from their IP address?
Article C2663 - May 23, 2006
Actually, the first number of the IP changing with it being the same ISP isn't so unlikely. For example, they may have a block of IPs between 70.0.0.1 and 72.255.255.255 or something. When my IP changed (it is technically dynamic, but it stays the same for months) it went from 80.xxx.xxx.xxx to 81.xxx.xxx.xxx.
Posted by: Chris at May 24, 2006 12:41 AMTrue enough, which is why I referenced the ARIN lookup to further validate the source of the IP. But the higher order numbers changing is rare - it's much more likely that an ISP will assign the same connections out of the same lower order range. As you've seen, not impossible, just rare.
Posted by: Leo at May 24, 2006 12:54 PMHi. But I have another question. What if the IP is the same, but the computer isn't? For example, the IP is the same, but one time it was a Mac, another a PC? Does it mean it's the same person in the same building? Could it be another location?
Posted by: Pam at July 6, 2007 5:44 AMI understand about the Ip's that are static and dynamic. My question is if for example a person lives in Atlanta, can the Ip show up sometimes from Altlanta directly or can it show up sometimes show up as being within close proximity of Atlanta and also can the IP number on tis change even within close proximity? I aks this question because someone i know and know their original Ip adress always or most always showed up as a certain location with the same IP,, however recently i have been getting "views" from places that are suburbs of Atlanta. The reason i ask is that i know no one else within this area, but reently the IP's numbers have changed, yet still remain similar and are within a near location.
05-Mar-2009