If I check with google, I can see my public IP. Is there something on the Ubuntu command-line which will yield me the same answer?

22 Answers

If you are not behind a router, you can find it out using ifconfig.

If you are behind a router, then your computer will not know about the public IP address as the router does a network address translation. You could ask some website what your public IP address is using curl or wget and extract the information you need from it:

curl -s | sed -e 's/.*Current IP Address: //' -e 's/<.*$//'

or shorter

curl

For finding the external ip, you can either use external web-based services, or use system based methods. The easier one is to use the external service, also the ifconfig based solutions will work in your system only if you're not behind a NAT. the two methods has been discussed below in detail.

Finding external IP using external services

The easiest way is to use an external service via a commandline browser or download tool. Since wget is available by default in Ubuntu, we can use that.
To find your ip, use-

$ wget -qO- ; echo

Courtesy:

You could also use lynx(browser) or curl in place of wget with minor variations to the above command, to find your external ip.

Using curl to find the ip:

$ curl

For a better formatted output use:

$ curl ; echo

A faster (arguably the fastest) method using `dig` with `OpenDNS` as resolver:

The other answers here all go over HTTP to a remote server. Some of them require parsing of the output, or rely on the User-Agent header to make the server respond in plain text. They also change quite frequently (go down, change their name, put up ads, might change output format etc.).

The DNS response protocol is standardised (the format will stay compatible).

Historically DNS services (OpenDNS, Google Public DNS, ..) tend to survive much longer and are more stable, scalable and generally looked after than whatever new hip whatismyip.com HTTP service is hot today.

(for those geeks that care about micro-optimisation), this method should be inherently faster (be it only by a few micro seconds).

Using dig with OpenDNS as resolver:

$ dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com
111.222.333.444

Copied from:

Finding external IP without relying on external services

If you know your network interface name

Type the following in your terminal:

$ LANG=c ifconfig <interface_name> | grep "inet addr" | awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}'

In the above, replace <interface_name> with the name of your actual interface, e.g: eth0, eth1, pp0, etc...

Example Usage:

$ LANG=c ifconfig ppp0 | grep "inet addr" | awk -F: '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}'
111.222.333.444

If you don't know your network interface name

Type the following in your terminal (this gets the name and ip address of every network interface in your system):

$ LANG=c ifconfig | grep -B1 "inet addr" |awk '{ if ( $1 == "inet" ) { print $2 } else if ( $2 == "Link" ) { printf "%s:" ,$1 } }' |awk -F: '{ print $1 ": " $3 }'

Example Usage:

$ LANG=c ifconfig | grep -B1 "inet addr" |awk '{ if ( $1 == "inet" ) { print $2 } else if ( $2 == "Link" ) { printf "%s:" ,$1 } }' |awk -F: '{ print $1 ": " $3 }'
lo: 127.0.0.1
ppp0: 111.222.333.444

N.B: Outputs are indicative and not real.

Courtesy:

UPDATE

LANG=c has been added to ifconfig based usages, so that it always gives the english output, irrespective of locale setting.

My favorite has always been :

curl ifconfig.me

simple, easy to type.

You will have to install curl first ;)

If ifconfig.me is down try icanhazip.com and or ipecho.net

curl icanhazip.com

curl ipecho.net

icanhazip.com is my favorite.

curl icanhazip.com

You can request IPv4 explicitly:

curl ipv4.icanhazip.com

If you don't have curl you can use wget instead:

wget -qO- icanhazip.com

Running my own service, designed to be simple and stupid, ident.me.

Its API and implementation are documented at

Examples from the terminal (add https:// for security at the expense of speed):

curl ident.me
curl v4.ident.me
curl v6.ident.me

You could use a DNS request instead of HTTP request to find out your public IP:

$ dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com

It uses resolver1.opendns.com dns server to resolve the magical myip.opendns.com hostname to your ip address.

Amazon AWS

curl

Sample output:

123.123.123.123

Also works on browser:

I like it because:

it returns just the plaintext IP in the reply body, nothing else
it is from a well known provider which is unlikely to go offline anytime soon

The one i'm using is :

wget -O - -q icanhazip.com

Yes, you can have ip :-)

Type in this exactly, press Enter where indicated:

telnet ipecho.net 80Enter
GET /plain HTTP/1.1Enter
HOST: ipecho.net Enter
BROWSER: web-kitEnter
Enter

This manually submits a HTTP request, which will return your IP at the bottom of a HTTP/1.1 200 OK reply

Example output:

$ telnet ipecho.net 80
Trying 146.255.36.1...
Connected to ipecho.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /plain HTTP/1.1
HOST: ipecho.net
BROWSER: web-kit
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 07:11:42 GMT
Server: Apache
Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html
f
111.222.333.444
0

For this, STUN was invented. As a client you can send a request to a publicly available STUN server and have it give back the IP address it sees. Sort of the low level whatismyip.com as it uses no HTTP and no smartly crafted DNS servers but the blazingly fast STUN protocol.

Using `stunclient`

If you have stunclient installed (apt-get install stuntman-client on debian/ubuntu) you can simply do:

$stunclient stun.services.mozilla.com
Binding test: success
Local address: A.B.C.D:42541
Mapped address: W.X.Y.Z:42541

where A.B.C.D is the IP address of your machine on the local net and W.X.Y.Z is the IP address servers like websites see from the outside (and the one you are looking for). Using sed you can reduce the output above to only an IP address:

stunclient stun.services.mozilla.com | sed -n -e "s/^Mapped address: \(.*\):.*$/\1/p"

However, your question was how to find it using the command line, which might exclude using a STUN client. So I wonder...

Using `bash`

A STUN request can be handcrafted, sent to an external STUN server using netcat and be post-processed using dd, hexdump and sed like so:

$echo -en '\x00\x01\x00\x08\xc0\x0c\xee\x42\x7c\x20\x25\xa3\x3f\x0f\xa1\x7f\xfd\x7f\x00\x00\x00\x03\x00\x04\x00\x00\x00\x00' | nc -u -w 2 stun.services.mozilla.com 3478 | dd bs=1 count=4 skip=28 2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '1/1 "%u."' | sed 's/\.$/\n/'

The echo defines a binary STUN request (0x0001 indicates Binding Request) having length 8 (0x0008) with cookie 0xc00cee and some pasted stuff from wireshark. Only the four bytes representing the external IP are taken from the answer, cleaned and printed.

Working, but not recommended for production use :-)

P.S. Many STUN servers are available as it is a core technology for SIP and WebRTC. Using one from Mozilla should be safe privacy-wise but you could also use another: STUN server list

Another fast one (might well be the fastest, relatively)

curl

I have a stupid service for this by telnet. Something like this:

telnet myip.gelma.net
Your IPv4: xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Your IPv6: ::ffff:xxxx:xxxx

Feel free to use it.

You can read a web page using only bash, without curl, wget:

$ exec 3<> /dev/tcp/ && # open connection echo 'GET /' >&3 && # send http 0.9 request read -u 3 && echo $REPLY && # read response exec 3>&- # close fd

These will get the local IPs:

ifconfig

or for shorter output:

ifconfig | grep inet

also

ip addr show

and probably:

hostname -I

This should get the external IP

wget -O - -q ; echo

N.B. If you don't mind to installing curl, this as well:

curl

For those of us with login access to our routers, using a script to ask the router what its' WAN IP address is is the most efficient way to determine the external IP address. For instance the following python script prints out the external IP for my Medialink MWN-WAPR300N router:

import urllib, urllib2, cookielib
import re
from subprocess import check_output as co
cookie_jar = cookielib.CookieJar()
opener = urllib2.build_opener(urllib2.HTTPCookieProcessor(cookie_jar))
urllib2.install_opener(opener)
def get(url, values=None): data = None if values: data = urllib.urlencode(values) req = urllib2.Request(url, data) rsp = urllib2.urlopen(req) return rsp.read()
router = co(['ip', '-o', 'ro', 'list', '0.0.0.0/0']).split()[2]
url = "http://" + router
get(url+"/index.asp")
get(url+"/LoginCheck", dict(checkEn='0', Username='admin', Password='admin'))
page = get(url+"/system_status.asp")
for line in page.split("\n"): if line.startswith("wanIP = "): print line.split('"')[1] exit(1)

Note that this is not very secure (as is the case with plaintext credentials & logging in to most routers), and is certainly not portable (needs to be changed for each router). It is however very fast and a perfectly reasonable solution on a physically secure home network.

To customize the script for another router, I recommend using the tamperdata addon in firefox to determine what HTTP requests to make.

Many home routers can be queried by UPnP:

curl "" -H "Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"" -H "SoapAction:urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection:1#GetExternalIPAddress" -d "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> <s:Envelope s:encodingStyle=' xmlns:s=' <s:Body> <u:GetExternalIPAddress xmlns:u='urn:schemas-upnp-org:service:WANIPConnection:1' /> </s:Body> </s:Envelope>" -s

Then, grep the ip address from the answer.

grep -Eo '\<[[:digit:]]{1,3}(\.[[:digit:]]{1,3}){3}\>'

If you are using DD-WRT then this works for me:

curl -s 192.168.1.1 | grep "ipinfo" | awk -v FS="(IP: |</span)" '{print $2}'

curl -s -u your_ddwrt_username:your_ddwrt_password | grep "ipinfo" | awk -v FS="(IP: |</span)" '{print $2}'

Where 192.168.1.1 is the Gateway/Router LAN IP Address of the DD-WRT router.
The -s component means silent (i.e. don't show the curl progress information).
Oh, I should mention that I use the above with "DD-WRT v24-sp2 (01/04/15) std".

If you have installed lynx in Ubuntu type

lynx bot.whatismyipaddress.com

Maybe I am a little late, but inxi can do it fairly easy.

Install inxi

sudo apt install inxi

Then run the following command

inxi -i

Example with my information blocked out using the z option for copy and paste to sites like this:

~$ inxi -iz
Network: Card: NVIDIA MCP77 Ethernet driver: forcedeth IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> WAN IP: <filter> IF: eth0 ip-v4: <filter> ip-v6-link: N/A

Where it says <filter> is where your WAN IP, IPv4, MAC address etc will appear

use ip!

ip addr show

then look for the relevant adapter (not lo, and usually eth0), and locate the ip address near inet.

Simply issue a traceroute for any website or service..

sudo traceroute -I google.com

Line 2 always seems to be my public IP address after it gets past my router gateway.

user@user-PC ~ $ sudo traceroute -I google.com
traceroute to google.com (173.194.46.104), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 25.0.8.1 (25.0.8.1) 230.739 ms 231.416 ms 237.819 ms 2 199.21.149.1 (199.21.149.1) 249.136 ms 250.754 ms 253.994 ms**

So, make a bash command.

sudo traceroute -I google.com | awk -F '[ ]' '{ if ( $2 ="2" ) { print $5 } }'

And the output...

(199.21.149.1)

I don't think relying on PHP scripts and the sort is good practice.

A command with no dependencies except 8.8.8.8 being a GOogle DNS:

echo $(ip route get 8.8.8.8 | awk '{print $NF; exit}')

22 Answers

Finding external IP using external services

A faster (arguably the fastest) method using `dig` with `OpenDNS` as resolver:

Finding external IP without relying on external services

Using `stunclient`

Using `bash`

These will get the local IPs:

This should get the external IP

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22 Answers

Finding external IP using external services

A faster (arguably the fastest) method using dig with OpenDNS as resolver:

Finding external IP without relying on external services

Using stunclient

Using bash

These will get the local IPs:

This should get the external IP

Related Journals

How can I reduce congestion on the highway coming into the city?

How to determine correct engine to steal on Big Oil: Day 2

I don't want NPCs to get killed by Vampire Attacks. How do I do this?

Can you disassemble items?

A faster (arguably the fastest) method using `dig` with `OpenDNS` as resolver:

Using `stunclient`

Using `bash`