Multi-Vantage IP Check
Three vantage points, one browser. Compare the address and network each one saw, and read what a split path means.
What each row is, exactly. All three rows are hostnames your browser contacted, so each one reports the address it actually saw. Nothing here is a lookup of you from somewhere else, and nothing here is cached: every row is one request your own browser made.
asking the single-stack hostnames what they see
| Vantage point | Address it saw | Network | Location | What this row can and cannot show |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Our edgethis page | 216.73.217.174 | AS16509 Anthropic, PBC | Columbus, US | The address your browser used to reach us. The location is the edge that answered (CMH), and our edge exists in many cities, so this location can move without your address changing. |
| IPv4-only hostnamev4 origin | asking… | A separate hostname that answers over IPv4 only. A different address here than at the edge means your traffic leaves by more than one path. | ||
| IPv6-only hostnamev6 origin | asking… | Blank means this connection has no working IPv6, which is a fact about your path and not an error. |
Compare in this order: address, then network, then location. The address is an observation. The network is a lookup in routing data and is nearly always right. The location is an estimate and is the least reliable field on the page, so a location difference on its own means nothing.
Read the rows in one order. Address first, then network, then location. The address is an observation. The network is a lookup in routing data and is nearly always right. The location is an estimate and is the least reliable field on the page, so a location difference on its own means nothing.
Why one vantage point is not enough
Every “what is my IP” page, this site included, answers the question “what address did you use to reach this server”. That is one measurement. It is correct and it is incomplete, because the answer can depend on the destination.
Three cases make that difference visible, and all three confuse people regularly.
- CGNAT pools. One subscriber, several public addresses, chosen per connection.
- Split-tunnel VPNs. Different destinations, different egress.
- Anycast edges. One address, many physical locations, so the reported city changes without the address changing.
What the three rows are, and are not
Every row is one request your browser made, so every row is a first-hand observation. The edge row is the address you used to reach this page. The IPv4-only and IPv6-only rows are separate hostnames that answer over one address family each, so each one reports the address that family carried. No other machine is asked what it sees of you.
Reading the comparison table
Compare in this order: address first, then ASN, then location. The address is an observation. The ASN is a lookup in routing data and is nearly always right. The location is an estimate and is the least reliable field on the page, so a location difference alone means nothing.
Limits
Three vantage points is enough to detect that paths differ. It is not enough to map which destinations take which path. If you need that, the answer is a routing table on your own machine, not a web page.
About this tool
Your browser fetches the same JSON payload from three vantage points: our anycast edge, an IPv4-only hostname and an IPv6-only hostname. Each one reports the address and network it actually saw. Usually all three agree. When they disagree your traffic takes a split path, and the page names the likely cause: a carrier NAT pool, a VPN that tunnels only one address family, or a proxy sitting in front of one family.
How to read the result
- All three agree
- All three see one egress address. This is the normal case for a residential connection with no VPN, and also for a correctly configured full-tunnel VPN.
- Edge differs from both hostnames
- The address is the same but the observed location differs, because our edge sits on an anycast network with points of presence in many cities and the single-stack hostnames do not. You reached a different edge, not a different address.
- Different addresses from the same ISP prefix
- Your carrier is load balancing across a NAT pool, which is standard CGNAT behaviour on mobile and on some home connections. Each new connection can take a different public address from the same block, which breaks any service that assumes one session equals one address.
- Different addresses from different ASNs
- Traffic is splitting across paths, which on a VPN means split tunnelling, where some destinations go through the tunnel and others do not. It is the same class of problem as a WebRTC or DNS leak, seen at the transport layer.
- One hostname unreachable
- One of the three did not answer, so we report it as unreachable rather than folding it into the comparison, and the cause can be a network filter, an outage on our side, or an extension blocking a cross-origin request. Two agreeing answers and one failure is still a usable result, and one answer alone is not.
- IPv4 and IPv6 seen separately
- One hostname answers over IPv4 only and one over IPv6 only, so each row names the family that carried it. An IPv6 row on a different network from the IPv4 row is the classic dual-stack VPN leak, where the client tunnels one family and ignores the other.
Questions people ask
- Why do two websites show me different IP addresses?
- Three usual causes. Carrier-grade NAT assigns your connections different public addresses from a pool. A split-tunnel VPN routes some destinations through the tunnel and others directly. Or one site reads a proxy header incorrectly. This page distinguishes the first two by comparing the ASN of each observed address.
- Is a different location on each row a problem?
- Not by itself. Geolocation databases differ, and our edge is anycast, so the location reflects which point of presence answered. Compare the addresses and the networks. Those are facts. Locations are estimates from different sources and will differ routinely.
- How is this different from the VPN check?
- The VPN check tests the channels that leak around a tunnel: WebRTC, DNS, and IPv6. This one tests whether ordinary HTTPS traffic to different destinations leaves by different paths. A split tunnel that keeps DNS and WebRTC inside the tunnel passes the VPN check and fails here.
- My mobile connection shows a different address on every reload. Why?
- Carrier NAT pools. Mobile networks put many subscribers behind a set of public addresses and assign them per connection, sometimes per flow. You cannot change it, and services that pin a session to an address will log you out unexpectedly because of it.
- Does anything on this page look me up from somewhere else?
- No. Every row is a request your own browser made to one of our hostnames, and each row reports the address that hostname saw. We never hand your address to a third party and never ask another machine what it sees of you.
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Last reviewed 2026-09-05.