How to Change Your IP address [5 Free Methods]

In this article, we will be looking at what an IP address is, what it does and how you can change your Public IP Address Easily. There can be many reasons for changing your IP address and many ways, both of which are discussed in the following writing.

What is an IP address ?

IP address or Internet Protocol address is a unique number that is assigned to your device by your Internet Service provider or ISP. This IP address is responsible for uniquely locating your device on the Internet. IP address can be public or private. A Public IP address can be known to all devices in the network and is used to transfer traffic to your device by other devices. There are dynamically allocated IP addresses, like the ones that are allocated when on data connection. These IP addresses change every-time you turn off and on your data connection.

An IP address looks something like this : 192.188.34.1

To know what is your public IP address , go to whatismyip

Alternatively , you can look up your IP address using command prompt.

• Go to start and search for “CMD”
• Once cmd is started , type ipconfig and hit enter
• The IPV4 address is the IP address you are looking for.

Why change Public IP address ?

Big question is why you should care to change your public IP address ? Well, there can be a number of reasons to do so. Here are some, maybe yours also fits in

1. Using your public IP address , your region’s location can also be located. This is like compromising privacy for some folks. So to change that behavior, you might need to change your public
2. Perhaps your old router is providing poor IP addresses which are already being used by other computers or devices on the network, causing speed and connection issues for you. So to fix a malfunctioning router, you might want to change your public IP
3. Or you got a new router head over to router IP 192.168.0.1  and follow on screen instructions to configure it to your home or local network.

How to change your IP address

So after having a small discussion on what is public IP address and why would you intend to change it , we will now jump into the methods that are used for changing your IP address.

Method 1 : Reset your router by unplugging it and plugging it again

Before we get to talking about how this method works, one thing is to be made clear, this method only works with dynamic IPs. If you have a static IP address ( permanently allocated by the ISP) then this method will not work for you.

Alright , to reset your router, unplug your browser and plug it again after 5-7 minutes. Doing so should change your Public IP address across your devices.

Method 2 : Manually change public IP using control panel on windows

To change your computer’s IP address , follow along the following steps

• Open control panel  by searching it in start menu
• Open Network and security
• Select your connection and click on properties
• Search for the option that says Internet protocol version (IPV4 / TCP )  and double click on it.
• Tick mark the use the following IP address  and enter your own configuration
• save and exit

Once done , go to whatismyip to check if your Public IP address changed.

Method 3 : Changing IP address using command prompt / changing DHCP

For changing your public IP address , you can use the command prompt on windows 7 and above using the following steps. This methods helps reset your DHCP or Dynamic Host configuration protocol. DHCP dynamically assigns new IP address each time and other network parameters to each device on a network so they can communicate with other IP networks.

• Go to start menu and search for cmd and open as administrator
• type the following commands

ipconfig / release

and then type ipconfig / renew

• Save your settings and restart your computer.

Your IP address should have been changed by now. You can check for changes on whatismyip .

Method 4 : Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A VPN is awesome, you might have heard about it. But what makes VPN stand out is that VPN connects you to servers through tunnels, effectively hiding your activity by changing your IP address in the first place. As we discussed that IP address is used to uniquely identify any device on a network,what VPN does is it changes your IP address. You might want to do it because you might want to access a service or a website that is not available in your area, or simply because you dont want your ISP or others to track your internet activity and see what you are up-to.

The best practice is to install the VPN on your router itself. In this way , all devices connecting through the router will be connecting through the VPN and every device’s public IP address will be hidden and replaced with some other IP address. Some best known VPN providers to save your day are NordVPN , PIA ( private internet access ) etc . Installing VPN on router is super easy, there is just a form that you need to fill, nothing special

Not to mention that there are free VPN providers also. You can try any of them to have a taste of VPN

Method 5 : Using a proxy server

Proxy server is also a paid service. Proxy server acts as an intermediary between your device and the server. What happens is that your device connects to the proxy server instead of actual data server. And the proxy server in turn connects to the data server using its own IP address , thereby effectively hiding your device’s public IP address. The functioning of proxy server is a whole lot of detail in its own.It simply hides your device’s public IP address , so does a VPN.

Last but not the least

If you have reached so far and unfortunately no method has worked for you , then contact your ISP or your Internet Service Provider and request them to allocate you a new IP address. This of course depends on your ISP’s own policies. We highly recommend trying all the above methods before contacting your ISP as this is a bit tedious job. We hove the above text helped you in changing or resetting your public IP address.