Private IP Ranges: Why Your Home IP is 192.168.x.x

If you look at your computer's IP address right now, it likely starts with 192, 172, or 10. These are Private IP Addresses, and they are not reachable from the internet.

The RFC 1918 Ranges

To conserve public IPv4 addresses, three ranges were set aside for internal use only:

• 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255: Used by large corporate networks.
• 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255: Used by medium networks and Docker containers.
• 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255: The standard for home Wi-Fi routers.

Why They Are Shielded

Private IPs allow millions of homes to reuse the same address space internally. Your router uses NAT (Network Address Translation) to translate these private IPs into your one single Public IP to communicate with the world.