Getting your public IP address from the command-line

Many sites giving your public IP address return a web page with a bloat of html. From the command-line, you are usually only interested in the IP-address itself. Few services return exactly that.

Below are command-line examples to provide the public IP address mostly from a *nix perspective. Usually you can get similar commands to work with Windows binaries for wget and Windows binaries for curl.

In the end, I’ve opted for commands in this format, as I think akamai will last longer than the other sites (but does not include an end-of-line in the http result hence the echo on Mac/*nix):

• Mac / *nix:
  • curl http://whatismyip.akamai.com && echo
  • wget -q -O – http://whatismyip.akamai.com && echo
• Windows
  • curl http://whatismyip.akamai.com
  • wget -q -O – http://whatismyip.akamai.com

I’ve not tried aria2 yet, but might provide commands for that in the future.

These are the Linux permutations for akamai:

curl whatismyip.akamai.com && echo
curl ipv4.whatismyip.akamai.com && echo
curl ipv6.whatismyip.akamai.com && echo
curl ipv4.whatismyip.akamai.com && echo && curl ipv6.whatismyip.akamai.com && echo

The last two are convenient when you have both IPv4 and IPv6 configured on “the outside”.

You can replace curl with wget -q -O – (which outputs to stdout) for each command. You can even ommit the http:// (as that is the default protocol for both curl and wget).

These get you plain text:

• curl whatismyip.akamai.com
• curl ipv4.whatismyip.akamai.com
• curl ipv6.whatismyip.akamai.com
• curl icanhazip.com
• curl ipv4.icanhazip.com
• curl ipv6.icanhazip.com
• curl ident.me
• curl v4.ident.me
• curl v6.ident.me
• curl ipecho.net/plain
• curl ifconfig.me/ip
• curl ipogre.com
• curl ipv4.ipogre.com
• curl ipv6.ipogre.com
• curl bot.whatismyipaddress.com

Telnet:

• telnet myip.gelma.net

These get slightly more, but not much more than the plain IP address:

• curl ident.me/.json
• curl ident.me/.xml
• curl ident.me/.html
• curl ifconfig.me/all.json
• curl checkip.dyndns.org

Thanks to these links that helped me find out about the above services.

• ident.me API
• http://icanhazip.com/
• Show my IP address.
• IP Ogre | Linux Command Line.
• IP Echo Service – Get IP Address programatically.
• networking – Command for determining my public IP? – Ask Ubuntu.
• What is my public IP | Linux.
• Linux: Get IP Address on Command Line/Shell (internal/external).
• What Is My IP Address? – ifconfig.me.
• http://checkip.dyndns.org/
• NTLM and Kerberos Authentication for a WebRequest and a WebProxy.

If you ever want to run your own Dynamic DNS service (DDNS): http://andrwe.org/linux/own-ddns

–jeroen