OT - Computer question

I know of a guy that has three computers and all are routed to one internet service. My question is this, will the same IP address show up on here no matter what computer he uses or does each computer show its own IP address. I think this guy is or has played some games and i would like to be able to prove it. I'm very computer illiterate so i hope i have ask about the correct address name (IP)? I would like to find out if in fact this guy jumps from one computer to another changing his screen name to play his games.

It depends on how they PCs are routed/networked.

They can all show up as one address (most common) if they are behind a single router - or they could be obtaining a unique address on each PC.

You'd have to know if the PCs are set to obtain their addresses from the local router - or from the ISP to know for sure or examine each PC...

Howard

The short answer is probably not. The second part of the answer is to never bring a knife to a gunfight. If your opponent is much more tech-savvy than you, don't bet folding money against him.

The longer answer to that question depends on what kind of internet service he has.

Most home-based internet service is provided with dynamic IP addressing in which the customer would get whatever IP address the provider assigns at the moment the customer is logged on to the service. The customer would not have any way to influence that.

For an additional fee, the internet service customer can have a fixed IP address. The IP address would be the same whenever his service is logged on. Again, there would be no way for the customer to influence the IP address although if he is seriously nuts he could have multiple services and multiple fixed IP addresses.

One possibility would be if your opponent is a technician for an internet service provider. If he had access to the IP address assignment software, he could do anything he wanted.

The guy could also be using an internet anonymizer which would provide a fake IP address for his use. That address would probably not be under the user's control.

Most home routers use a function loosely called NAT, or Network Address Translation. They will use a single IP address on the external side (usually hooked to the cable modem or DSL), and one the other side will set up a different set of IP addresses that the computers will use on the internal side, typically one per computer obtained using a process that hands out IP addresses dynamically called DHCP. Traffic destined for the outside world from each computer(so to the router will use the internal DHCP IP addresses, the router will remap that to the outside IP address, keeping track of where that request originated (often by port number). Responses will come back with the outside IP address to the router can use the port number information to redirect the traffic internally. In this manner multiple computers can appear to have the same IP address external to the router...

If he uses ONE internet connection they will all either have the same IP address or ones that are sequential (or nearly so). He could use different internet proxy servers to get addresses that are not sequential and in different ranges. Now if he has connections to multiple ISPs or multiple connections from the same ISP he could get non sequential addresses. If the connections are from the same ISP they would be in the same range but non sequential. Of course just about anything is possible with the right level of expertise.

I want to thank everyone for the responses, my question was answered very well, thanks again. So i will try another avenue. As the one response said, you dont take a knife to a gun fight and that is 100% correct. In my case they would have a big gun against my small butter knife, LOL as i said i'm very computer illiterate.

Typically on an average setup it's going to look like the same IP address from all the comupters as you describe. For more money, it's possible to get different addresses.

Typically if a person wants to play games, there are ways to go IP hopping, which I don't understand well enough to explain in detail, but you can send all of your internet communications over to Russia or Turkey or whatever, and it gets run through a setup that assigns your stuff a different IP address, so it will look like you are coming from someplace completely different. If one wanted to play 'games' & knew computers well, that would be the route to take..... With enough expertice, even this can be traced, but it becomes a game of who can computer better....

--->Paul

Which forum/message board is he using? Are you seeing the same adddress or different ones? What about timing of his responses? Not all of them list the ip address like this one does so you couldn't tell. With those he could change screen names with the same computer.

If he has access to the computer of a friend, relative, neighbor, or work computer with different locations and isp's then there would be different addresses. If he worked for a large company using work computers, they probably have multiple ip addresses (I guess) and lines to handle all the traffic and defintely something bigger than a little 4 port switch/router most homes and small businesses have.

He could also take his laptop around to different wifi hotspots like Mickey D's and Starbucks and have a different ip address.

If you are referring to the guy on these boards that that was removed but comes back every so often, I'm not sure you could catch him in the act. Lots of characters on the internet, I don't have a problem with him or anyone else as I control what I read and don't have time to read everything anyway.

I go to some other boards where they don't list ip addresses. There are a few who change screen names but I don't care and you usually have a good idea from comparing their writing style that doesn't change.

You should look to writing style for proof unless all the screen names use the same ip address which would be fairly positive proof. Not so if they have different IP addresses.

with aol you can have several e mail address. oeven on the same or difference computers

WOW!!!

Somebody still has AOL???