Mnemonic external IP

When diagnosing networking problems, I ping to:

My local IP
My gateway IP
An external IP
An external domain name

Usually, when troubleshooting, the internet is unaccessible, then I need to remember an external IP address.

I need any (easy to remember) IP address. By example, google ip is 72.14.204.147. Cool, but it's hard to remember...

What external IP you use? Do you have an mnemonic external IP address, then will be easy to remember?

Click Ok

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 3 436

Answers

Alternative solution: if you do this on a single machine only, you could write a little batch file which executes four ping commands.

This way you'll just have to remember the name of that batch file.

BTW: the IP addresses I use are Google's DNS server: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

splattne

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 14 208

DNS Servers are "ping'able"? – Click Ok – 2010-01-16T15:39:52.703

4As a general answer yes. Whether a server is pingable or not has nothing to do with what the server does. As a specific case(8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) yes those do pong back. – Kevin M – 2010-01-16T15:47:59.473

3btw: Google's infrastructure is more than "one server" per IP address. And: you will never know, if it is the same "server" which responds to different services. Depends how they structure their network/routers/load balancing systems. – splattne – 2010-01-16T19:19:37.440

Or you could pick a service you like and that is pingable, and give that IP a name in your hosts file; /etc/hosts on Unixlikes and %WINDIR%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on Windows.

Jakob Borg

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 361

OpenDNS is
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

I use them for testing (they've been around longer than google's DNS).

Edit: You can ping these addresses. The fact that they are DNS servers is incidental to the proposed use here. They are merely another set of (reliable) options to use.

Fake Name

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 2 134

1And they are obviously easier to remember than 8.8.8.8. – Gnoupi – 2010-03-29T07:37:06.347

Hardly, but they are another option. I have them well memorized because I use OpenDNS, so it's not a big deal for me to ping them.

In any event, to each his own. Personally, I don't like google seeing all my DNS requests. – Fake Name – 2010-03-29T08:20:16.493

1Understandable choice, but the question is only about an easy external ip to ping, not about a DNS, so it doesn't really matter. – Gnoupi – 2010-03-29T08:26:33.207

You can ping both addresses. Also, they are very reliable (multile redundant servers), and fairly easy to remember. – Fake Name – 2010-03-30T02:39:45.037

You can place any label you want in your hosts file, and assign an address. Like

google-bynumber    72.14.204.147

Naturally, whatever name you pick collides with the real one, so pick one that wouldn't occur in real life. As a bonus you can use it in your browser and skip all the ping business (since lots of times it's a dns problem). I have bookmarks pointing to such things (as well as local printers).

gbarry

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 694

-1

Unless I'm missing something here, your external IP address is provided by your ISP.

You can make this more memorable by using a free DNS service such as DyDNS.

For example, instead of;

ping 87.145.43.6

You have;

ping clickok.getmyip.com

(The DyDNS domains you can use are any from this list)

RJFalconer

Posted 2010-01-16T14:55:25.493

Reputation: 9 791

1Pinging a Domain Name if your connection is down is uninformative. Basically, it tells you either your DNS configuration is wrong, OR the DNS server is down, OR your connection is down.

You really have to use an ip. – Fake Name – 2010-03-29T07:11:53.493

Obviously. I think this is left over from his original question. This is in answer to the "I need remember an external IP address" component. – RJFalconer – 2010-03-29T19:47:51.873

Thanks, but it not MY external IP. I need any IP address. By example, google ip is 72.14.204.147. Cool, but it's hard to remember... – Click Ok – 2010-01-16T15:36:08.483