About
What This Place Is
whatismyip.wiki is a free, open networking knowledge base. We write about IP addresses, DNS, VPNs, protocols, security, and all the other stuff that makes the internet actually work. And we do it without trying to sell you something.
That last part might sound like a low bar, but honestly? Go search for “what is a VPN” right now. Count how many results are just NordVPN or ExpressVPN affiliate marketing disguised as education. The first page of Google is basically a VPN storefront. That’s the problem we’re trying to solve.
We explain things. That’s it. No product placement, no affiliate links, no “our partner” recommendations. When we talk about VPNs, we explain the technology. When we discuss DNS, we cover how it works. We’re not secretly owned by a security company. Nobody paid us to write any of this.
Why We Built This
The internet has a weird gap when it comes to networking education. You’ve got three main options and they all have issues:
Corporate knowledge bases like Cloudflare’s Learning Center, Fortinet’s CyberGlossary, or Palo Alto’s blog. These are well-written but naturally biased toward their own products. Cloudflare’s article on CDNs is excellent, but obviously Cloudflare’s CDN comes out looking pretty good by the end, you know? It’s not malicious, but it’s not neutral either.
Generic tech sites like GeeksforGeeks, TechTarget, or HowToGeek. These cover networking topics but they’re drowning in ads, often outdated, and written to hit word counts rather than actually teach concepts. You spend more time dismissing cookie banners and closing pop-ups than actually learning.
Academic resources like university course materials and RFCs. Technically thorough but written for people who already understand the material. Reading RFC 791 (the IPv4 spec) is a great way to understand IP addresses if you already understand IP addresses. Otherwise, it’s like learning to swim by reading the chemical properties of water.
We wanted something that fills the gap: technically accurate, genuinely educational, beautifully designed, and completely free of commercial agenda. Wikipedia gets close, but it reads like a textbook and looks like it was designed in 2004. We can do better.
The WhatIsMyIP Ecosystem
whatismyip.wiki is one piece of a bigger project:
whatismyip.technology is where the tools live. IP lookup, DNS checker, WHOIS, port scanner, HTTP headers inspector, reverse DNS, and more. Fifteen free tools with no signup required. Every article on this wiki links to the relevant tool so you can test what you’re learning.
whatismyip.codes is the API documentation. If you’re a developer who needs IP geolocation data, DNS lookups, or network intelligence in your applications, this is where you find the docs.
whatismyip.wiki (you’re here) is the educational arm. Theory, concepts, explanations, and reference material. Learn the “why” here, use the “how” at whatismyip.technology, and build with whatismyip.codes.
The whole ecosystem is designed to be useful whether you’re a student learning networking for the first time, a sysadmin troubleshooting DNS at 2am, or a developer building network-aware applications.
How We Write
Every article on this wiki follows a few principles that we think make a real difference:
Snippet-bait intro: Every article starts with a 40 to 60 word definition paragraph that directly answers the question in the title. This is on purpose. When you ask Google “what is DNS,” you deserve the answer immediately, not after three paragraphs of padding. AI assistants like ChatGPT and Claude also benefit from this format, and we want our content to be the source they cite.
Honest about limits: We tell you what a VPN doesn’t protect. We explain that HTTPS doesn’t mean “safe.” We admit when something is genuinely complicated rather than pretending it’s simple. A lot of tech content oversimplifies to the point of being wrong. We’d rather be accurately nuanced than dangerously simple.
No vendor bias: When we compare DNS providers, we compare them fairly. When we discuss VPN protocols, we evaluate them on technical merits, not on which company is paying us an affiliate commission (hint: none of them are).
Practical first: Theory is nice but we focus on what you can actually do with the knowledge. Every article links to a tool where you can test the concept yourself. Reading about DNS is one thing. Watching a DNS lookup happen in real time on a domain you care about? That’s where learning actually sticks.
Conversational tone: We write like we’re explaining something to a smart friend. Technical accuracy without academic stuffiness. If a networking concept is kind of funny or absurd, we’ll say so. BGP really is held together with duct tape and trust. NAT really is your router lying to the internet. Acknowledging these things makes the material more memorable and more honest.
Technical Stack
For the nerds who care (and we respect that you care):
This site is built with Hugo, the static site generator. The entire site builds in under a second, ships as vanilla HTML/CSS, and weighs almost nothing. No JavaScript frameworks. No React. No node_modules directory with 47,000 packages. Just static HTML served by Nginx on a Hetzner VPS behind Cloudflare.
The CSS is hand-written. One single file. No Tailwind, no SCSS, no PostCSS, no preprocessors. We believe that 800 lines of CSS you actually understand is better than 8,000 utility classes you kind of understand.
Search works with a JSON index generated at build time and a ~50 line vanilla JavaScript file. No Algolia, no ElasticSearch, no third-party search service phoning home every keystroke.
Fonts are self-hosted (Inter and JetBrains Mono). No Google Fonts requests. No external tracking pixels. No analytics that require a privacy banner.
The whole thing should score 95+ on Lighthouse without any special optimization tricks, because there’s nothing to optimize away. Fast by default is better than fast after significant engineering effort.
Content Scope
As of launch, the wiki covers 48 articles across seven categories:
- IP Fundamentals: How IP addresses work, IPv4 vs IPv6, public vs private, subnetting
- DNS: Domain Name System, record types, DNSSEC, encrypted DNS
- Privacy and Security: VPNs, proxies, Tor, browser fingerprinting, DNS leaks
- Network Protocols: TCP/UDP, SSL/TLS, HTTP/HTTPS, DHCP, QUIC, WireGuard
- Tools and Concepts: WHOIS, traceroute, ping, port numbers, HTTP status codes
- Threats and Attacks: DDoS, IP spoofing, phishing, man-in-the-middle
- Infrastructure: ISPs, ASNs, NAT, BGP, CDNs
Plus a glossary with 100+ networking terms, each with a clear definition and links to the full article where one exists.
We plan to keep expanding. If there’s a networking topic you think we should cover, we’re genuinely interested in hearing about it.
Who We Are
We’re a small team of networking enthusiasts, developers, and writers who got tired of explaining basic networking concepts by linking to articles that were either biased, outdated, or covered in ads. So we built our own.
We’re not a venture-backed startup “disrupting the networking education space.” We’re not a subsidiary of a security company. We’re people who think the internet’s fundamental technologies deserve clear, honest documentation that doesn’t try to sell you something on every page.
Contact
Found an error? Want to suggest a topic? Have feedback? We actually read everything. Reach out through the channels listed on whatismyip.technology or submit corrections directly.
We take accuracy seriously. If we got something wrong, we want to know about it. No ego, no defensiveness. If your correction is right, we’ll fix it and credit you if you want.
Supporting This Project
This wiki is free and always will be. No paywalls, no premium tiers, no “subscribe to read more.” The best way to support us is to share articles you find useful, link to us from your own content, and use whatismyip.technology when you need a quick network tool.
If you’re a teacher, trainer, or professor: use our articles in your courses. Link to specific articles from your syllabus. We’d be honored, and you don’t need to ask permission (though a note saying “hey, I’m using your stuff” would make our day).
If you’re a developer or content creator: reference us in your documentation, blog posts, or videos. Accurate networking education benefits everyone, and the more people who have access to unbiased explanations, the better.
That’s really it. We write about networking. We try to be honest and clear about it. And we’ll keep doing it as long as people keep reading.
Outline Technologies SINCE 2015
An SEO, AEO, and GEO agency that builds brand visibility across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini — and then builds the actual products to prove the methods work. whatismyip.wiki is one of 15+ tools built and grown in-house. No clients were harmed in the making of this website.