What is the difference between WAN IP and LAN IP?

The WAN IP is public and visible to every website. The LAN IP, usually starting 192.168 or 10., identifies one device inside your own network and is never visible from outside.

Why is my router's WAN IP different from this page?

That means you are behind carrier-grade NAT. Your router holds an address in the shared 100.64.0.0/10 range while your provider translates it to the genuinely public address shown here.

What Is My WAN IP Address? — External IP vs Local IP

Q: What is my WAN IP address?

Your WAN IP is the external public address your router presents to the internet. It is the same address every device in your home shares, and it is shown at the top of this page.

WAN, LAN and why they differ

WAN stands for Wide Area Network — everything outside your building. LAN is your Local Area Network, everything inside it. Your router sits on the boundary and holds an address on each side.

The WAN address is public, assigned by your internet provider, and visible to every website you visit. It is the one shown above. The LAN address is private, assigned by your router, and identifies one device inside your network.

	WAN / external IP	LAN / local IP
Assigned by	Your internet provider	Your router
Visible to websites	Yes	No
Typical value	203.0.113.42	192.168.1.14
Shared by devices	Yes, all of them	No, one each
How to find it	This page	`ipconfig` or `ip addr`

This is the single most common confusion in home networking. Running ipconfig and reading out 192.168.1.14 to someone who asked for your external IP will not help them — that address exists in millions of homes simultaneously and is not routable on the internet.

Finding your WAN IP without a browser

Router admin page. Look for "WAN status", "Internet" or "Connection" — the public address is listed there.
Terminal. curl ifconfig.me on macOS or Linux, curl.exe ifconfig.me on modern Windows.
This page. Fastest, and it resolves both v4 and v6.

When your router's WAN IP does not match this page

If your router reports something in the range 100.64.0.0 to 100.127.255.255, you are behind carrier-grade NAT. Your provider is sharing one genuinely public address across many subscribers, and the address above is that shared one.

It matters if you want inbound connections. Port forwarding, self-hosting, remote camera access and hosting a game server all require a public address that belongs to you alone. Behind CGNAT none of that works, and the fix is to ask your provider for a public or static IP address, usually for a small fee.

Port forwarding basics

When you forward a port, you are telling your router: traffic arriving at this WAN address on this port should go to that specific LAN device. Both halves matter — the WAN address is how the outside world reaches your router, and the LAN address is where the router sends it next.

One catch worth knowing in advance: if your WAN address is dynamic, it will change eventually and every forwarding rule you shared will point nowhere. Dynamic DNS solves this by mapping a hostname that follows your address as it changes.