How to Look up an IP Address Owner

Every IP address is registered to an owner

by
Bradley Mitchell
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An MIT graduate who brings years of technical experience to articles on SEO, computers, and wireless networking.
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Bradley Mitchell
Updated on February 21, 2021
reviewed by
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Ryan Perian
Lifewire Tech Review Board Member
Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions.
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Article reviewed on Apr 16, 2020
Ryan Perian

What to Know

This article explains how to find the owner of an IP address, whether you know the IP address or not. Also included are instructions for finding an IP address using the Windows command prompt.

How to Find Out Who Owns an IP Address

Every 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. Many websites don't conceal their ownership, so you can look up this public information to find the owner. However, some services allow the owner to remain anonymous. As a result, their contact information and name are not easily found.

ARIN WHOIS service queries the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for an IP address and displays who owns the IP address and 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, for the 216.58.194.78 IP address, ARIN WHOIS says that the owner is Google and its IP range falls between 216.58.192.0 and 216.58.223.255.

Person finding the registered owner of an IP address
Lifewire / Alex Dos Diaz

If You Don't Know the IP Address

Some services are similar to ARIN WHOIS, but they can search for the website owner even when the website's IP address is unknown. Examples include UltraTools, Register.com, GoDaddy, and DomainTools.

To use ARIN WHOIS to find the owner of an IP address, convert the website to its IP address using a ping command in the Windows command prompt. With the command prompt open, type the following to find the website's IP address: 

ping websitename.com

Replace websitename with the website you want to find the IP address for.

ping facebook.com example in Command Prompt

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 returns an owner such as Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). However, these same addresses are employed on many home and business networks worldwide. To find who owns a private IP address in an organization, contact their network system administrator.

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