How to Look Up an IP Address Owner

Finding the Owner of an IP Address

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Updated May 05, 2017

Every public IP address used on the internet is registered to an owner. The owner may be an individual or a representative of a larger organization like an internet service provider.

Since lots of 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 so easily found, in which case IP lookup services won't work.

Look Up the IP Address on ARIN's WHOIS

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 like a contact number, list of other IP addresses in that range with the same owner, dates of registration, and more.

For instance, if we use the 216.58.194.78 IP address, ARIN's WHOIS says that the owner is Google, it was registered in 2000, and it's IP ranges fall between 216.58.192.0 and 216.58.223.255.

What If I Don't Know the IP Address?

Some services are similar to ARIN's WHOIS but 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.

However, if you still want to use ARIN's WHOIS to find the owner of an IP address, just "convert" the website to its IP address. This is done by 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.

What About Private and Other Reserved IP Addresses

Some IP address ranges are reserved for use on private networks or for internet research.

Attempting to look up these IP addresses in WHOIS will return 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.