How to Look Up an IP Address Owner

Every public Internet Protocol (IP) address used on the internet is registered to an owner. The owner may be an individual or a representative of a larger organization such as an internet service provider.

Since many websites don't conceal their ownership, you can look up this public information to see the owner of a website. However, some services let the owner remain anonymous so that their contact information and name are not easily found. In this case, IP lookup services won't work.

ARIN's WHOIS queries the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for each IP address you enter and tells you not only who owns the IP address but other information such as a contact number, a list of other IP addresses in that range with the same owner, and dates of registration.

For example, if you enter the 216.58.194.78 IP address, ARIN's WHOIS says that the owner is Google, the IP address was registered in 2000, and it's IP range falls between 216.58.192.0 and 216.58.223.255.

Some services are similar to ARIN's WHOIS, but they let you search for the website owner even if you don't know the website's IP address. Some examples include UltraTools, Register.com, GoDaddy, and DomainTools.

If you still want to use ARIN's WHOIS to find the owner of an IP address, convert the website to its IP address using a simple ping command in the Windows Command Prompt.

With Command Prompt open, type the following to find the website's IP address:

ping lifewire.com

Of course, replace lifewire.com with the website you want to find the IP address for.

Some IP address ranges are reserved for use on private networks or for internet research. Attempting to look up these IP addresses in WHOIS returns an owner such as Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

However, these same addresses are actually employed on many different home and business networks worldwide. To find who owns a private IP address within an organization, contact the network's system administrator.