T3h 1337 guide to basic networking

Networking 101

IP addresses

Every machine on the internet has an ip address. Far too often users in IRC ask "Whats the ip of www.x.com?" Every domain name (that's in use) resolves to an IP address. Domain names are only aliases for IP addresses because www.google.com is easier to remember then 74.125.47.99. The inverse is not neccesarily true--an ip may have no domain name. Also note that several different sites under different domains may share an IP.

Finding IPs

The ShowIP Firefox extension displays a site's IP address in the Firefox statusbar, and the extension works on Windows and Linux. Read: If you aren't a macfag, just use it.

   * nix, OS X 

januszeal@sumomo ~ $ host www.google.com www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com. www.l.google.com has address 74.125.47.99 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.47.103 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.47.104 www.l.google.com has address 74.125.47.147

   * Windows 

C:\Documents and Settings\janus zeal>ping www.lulzhost.net

Pinging www.lulzhost.net [209.62.62.138] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.62.62.138: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=50 Reply from 209.62.62.138: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=50 Reply from 209.62.62.138: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=50

PINGING A HOST WILL NOT CAUSE ANY KIND OF HARM TO IT, STOP TRYING TO TAKE DOWN SITES BY PINGING THEM YOU FUCKING RETARDS.

Hmm... The FireFox extension FoxyFlag may be interesting. It supposedly gives you a site's IP, although when I did on google it gave me 64.233.161.147

   * That is correct, however I find Domain Details to be a better add-on janus zealtalkwat 01:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Web hosting

Every site is being hosted on someone's server. Finding out which company hosts a site is good to find out what kind of bandwidth packages they have, etc.

Finding domain name registrar

   * go here
   * Enter the domain name
   * look for Registrar 

Finding host

Once you have an IP address, you can find out who is hosting a site.

   * go here
   * enter IP address
   * look for OrgName
   * ???
   * PROFIT!