Is there any use in tracing IP addresses?

Question

Now this is just an honest question, and I'll provide an example as well. Is there any use in tracing an IP address? Say a hacker hacks someone, software such as the new mcfee security software will allow you to "trace" the IP address to a particular region of the world.

I'm not quite sure I understanding the reasoning of this, since IP address are of course not the physical addresses of the machine on the network (the MAC address), and both can actually be spoofed with directions you can download from the Internet As well as hackers can hijack machines, and let the hijacked machines do their dirty work for them, so the IP address you would be tracing to, would be just a "zombie" machine, and not the hackers machine.

So what exactly is the point of IP address tracing (over the Internet)?

And no I seriously don't mean on a local network to find out if your connected to the right phsyical port.

I'm sorry if I wasn't specific enough in my question, I'm NOT asking HOW to trace ip addresses over the Internet, I'm asking if it serves any purpose.

Thanks Daniel, great answer. I didn't think of that.

Answer 1

Sure!

You ever go to a corporate website and they ask you to select a region? Well, your IP address already tells them.

Of course, as you already know, it's not a 100% reliable thing. For home use I can't think of many purposes. It's just a neat quirk. See where those people you swap music with on limewire are from.

Plus, you can use it to find where those hijacked machines are. If you're seeing a lot of traffic coming out of Annapolis, I think the navy might want to take a peak at their network...

Answer 2

You can go to visualroute.com it does the tracing with a visual map.

Finding your IP on a network or local computer:
On WinXP
go to run and type cmd and then when you are on command prompt, type ipconfig and you'll see your IP address.

or simply go to whatismyip.com and it shows your IP address and another website that is good place to go http://www.dnsstuff.com/

Happy Hunting,

CureVirus