What are the odds of me getting someone else's IP number?

Question

Is that even possible? I thought I had gotten banned from a certain webgame, but was completely unsure as to why. When I asked the webmaster and admins, they said that they hadn't blocked anyone's IP in the last several days. One person suggested that maybe i had gotten someone's IP who also used bellsouth and had gotten banned. he said i should reset my modem and maybe i'd get a new IP number for my pc. i did and it worked. hooray! so, is it possible to get someone else's IP?

Answer 1

Yes it is if you're on dialup because those change pretty often..Each internet company have what are called Blocks of IP numbers which are assigned to them..

Answer 2

For most providers, an IP address is not permanent. It is assigned when you sign on and "leased" to you for a period of time, usually a day or so. After that the IP is put back into their pool of number to assign to someone else. If you log on every day, you'll usually get the "lease" renewed. This is DHCP.

Therefore, it is possible for you to get an IP address that someone else used while banned from a site.

Answer 3

Yes. When you 'dial up' and with cable and adsl this happens wehn you power up your modem, your modem announces itself to your ISP. Your ISP has a pool of addresses it can hand out. Your modem asks for an IP address and your ISP's server says "this one is available you can have it" and that is your IP address until you hang up or power down your modem. It's possible someone else had that IP number and then disconnected. When you signed on your ISP server then gave you that free IP number.

Answer 4

Do you have AOL? Very likely. I used to have a board (ezboard) and people talked about this in the help section all the time. They would ban one user and 20 or so people would be banned.

Answer 5

It is pretty easy. I used to hack peoples computers before WinXP came out. An IP # is pretty safe these days. You shouldn't worry if someone knows your IP.