Bad IP Addresses and How to fix bad IPs!

Of course, if I said someone lived in a ‘bad neighbourhood’ or was rejected for a loan due to a bad credit score then you’d all know what I mean. But in this ever increasing online world there’s another aspect to your existence that can have an affect on your life – and that is your IP address.

Your IP address is of course your unique identifier assigned to your computer when it’s online. It’s full name is internet protocol address and you can read the technical background on the wonder of IP and it’s role in TCP/IP here. But suffice it to say, that without this address it is impossible to communicate online, it allows you to visit websites, download films and DVDs and send emails and just about every thing else available on the web.

So What is a Bad IP Address ?

Well there’s really two main definitions or causes of a bad address and we’ll try and cover both here.

Definition One of a Bad IP – An Address That Doesn’t Work

For most people the sole function of an IP address is to get you onto the internet. Which is of course very important to many of us. However it’s really a way of connecting with other computers via a protocol called TCP/IP the universal language of the net. If your computer/phone/tablet or whatever doesn’t have a valid address that can communicate with your Internet access point then you won’t be able to enjoy access to the internet at all.

the most common scenario by far for total lockout from the internet is when your device is automatically assigned a default address for some reason. It’s not actually a bad IP address merely one that can’t communicate properly in most scenarios.

A Bad IP is normally assigned from the range 169.x.x.x and is actually a default automatic address assigned to your device when there were no proper one’s available. It’s a perfectly functional IP in theory but one that will be unable to communicate with all the devices on your local network including crucially the modem/router or access point which allows access to the internet.

The most common reason is that your wireless access point or router has failed to assign your device a local IP address using a technology called DHCP.

Here’s the main fixes –

Restart your computer or device. This will allow a fresh request to be made for a new IP address, hopefully this time you’ll get a proper one. It will often be something like 192.x.x.x but don’t worry too much as long as it doesn’t start with 169 !
Restart the modem/wireless router. Often best combined with the previous suggestions, IPs are normally assigned from a pool of addresses on the access point. It might be this service has stalled or simply run out of addresses – restarting will also restart the service and could get everything working again.
Assign a static IP address. It’s not ideal but if you’re not getting an IP address assigned automatically you can assign a static IP address to your network card. Make sure it’s in the same range as your modem router. So for example if your access point is 192.168.1.1 then you could assign something like 192.168.1.28 and it would be able to connect.

Definition 2 Bad IP – A Valid IP Address That’s Being Blocked for Some Reason

In fact your IP address will already partly affect some areas of your online experience. Have you ever been blocked from a site or video? Perhaps tried to watch something on YouTube and been told it’s not available in your country? Well that’s all down to the location of your IP address – mainly what country it originates from.

So if you do a quick search online, many sites will tell you that to find your IP address – just select command prompt type in the command ipconfig /all as I’ve done in the screen shot above. From this screen you might suppose that my IP address is 192.168.1.15 as circled. This is actually a private IP address and is only valid in my internal network – it’s not my real internet facing address. Within my house like millions of other people I have multiple devices like laptops, phones and PCs all connected through my internet connection, these internal addresses allow them to communicate through my single real IP address.

To find your real IP address, you need to look at the configuration screen of your modem or router, the device that actually connects through to your internet provider.

Here’s mine –

Well a bit of mine, obscured for privacy reasons ! This address is allocated by my ISP to my connection and all my devices will appear to the internet to be from this single IP address. So my son, downloading games to his Xbox will appear at the same address as my wife and I surfing from the same location – we all originate from the same single address.

The Problems Caused By Bad IP Lists and These IP Addresses

So although at any point in time, your connection will be the only one online using this particular IP address – it doesn’t mean you always have. If you can see from the screen shot – the address has been assigned dynamically from my ISP – who basically have a big pool of addresses which they allocate individually to their customers. All the addresses will be assigned from this database which are registered to specific providers and countries. This is how geo-targeting works – everyone knows which country an IP address is assigned to. Which is why you’ll need a US IP address for Hulu and a UK address for BBC iPlayer, anyone can look up which country and IP address is located in very easily.

Sometimes an IP address can be used to send out millions of spam messages, attack websites or download and share pirated software and films. Most hackers and spammers will normally try and use someone else’s address to hide their location – obtained via viruses and malware without the owners knowledge.

This is the sort of behaviour that can find any IP address blacklisted – on some of the thousands of lists of ‘bad IP addresses’. Many of these lists have been developed to combat Spam and so mail servers across the world can block any mail received from them. Unfortunately IP addresses are routinely shared and reallocated to you can easily end up with one these being issued to your connection.

Common scenarios of being allocated a ‘bad address’:

Problems Buying Things Online

Ever tried to buy something online and found your payment couldn’t be processed? You might get some generic error message from the retailer saying it couldn’t accept payment or something similar. This may be that your IP address has found itself onto a blacklist somewhere. Frequently IP addresses are blocked if they’ve been used by online criminals perhaps with stolen credit card details or similar. Some of the spam lists are also used by big payment processors – some companies block addresses from whole countries, certainly a problem if you’re accessing the internet from somewhere like Nigeria.

Difficulty with Sending Email

If your address (or worst your mail server address) has been put on an internet blacklist you may find problems with emails. Maybe emails bouncing back undelivered often with obscure sounding error messages. Many of the big webmail providers like Hotmail and Yahoo will routinely block emails from bad server addresses on the blacklists.

Accessing Websites and Forums

Internet blacklists are often used by many sites to try and prevent spammers and hackers accessing the sites. Many websites will automatically block access from IP addresses which try and login to secure servers for example. Here’s the message I get whenever someone tries to hack into one of my websites.

IP:       202.102.253.6 (CN/China/-)
Failures: 5 (sshd)
Interval: 300 seconds
Blocked:  Permanent Block

Log entries:

Sep 13 04:51:36 xenon sshd[23175]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=202.102.253.6  user=root
Sep 13 04:51:38 xenon sshd[23175]: Failed password for root from 202.102.253.6 port 6291 ssh2
Sep 13 04:51:41 xenon sshd[23179]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=202.102.253.6  user=root
Sep 13 04:51:43 xenon sshd[23179]: Failed password for root from 202.102.253.6 port 4974 ssh2
Sep 13 04:51:46 xenon sshd[23185]: pam_unix(sshd:auth): authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty=ssh ruser= rhost=202.102.253.6  user=root

You can see that after three failed logins, the system will now block any attempted access from that specific IP address. It wouldn’t matter if that IP address was assigned to a different person or location, until that restriction is removed you wouldn’t be able to view my website using that address.

There are further questions 0f course – how do I find out if my address is blacklisted? How can I change my IP address? Which you will also find answered on the pages of this site.

So How Can I Change My IP Address if There’s a Problem

This is perfectly possible but it really depends on what are your requirements. For all client side problems, that is the IP addresses assigned to your connection – it’s important to remember you have no direct control. The address is assigned automatically to your router or modem when you connect to the internet by your internet service provider. You can certainly ask them to change it. Although this is not always a straightforward request with some of the more rigid Internet service providers. Sometimes it’s possible to force a change by rebooting all your equipment and then reconnecting. This may provide a different address depending on the configuration assigned by your ISP, unfortunately this doesn’t work as often nowadays.

Fix Bad Address by Hiding

In reality there is an easier way, to not exactly change your address but hide it. People have been using VPN services (virtual Private Networks) for years to provide some privacy when they’re online. However the added bonus is that while you’re connected to a VPN then your actual IP is hidden, instead everyone will only see the address of the VPN server your are connected to. If you pick the right VPN this means that you potentially have thousands of different address in lots of countries at your disposal.

Here’s a example of how you can use a VPN to change your IP addresses whenever you need –

As you can see the security software allows you to change your static IP by simply clicking a button. Also as long as you select the right country, then you can unlock content in any site restricted by geo targeting. Of course, it’s important that the VPN servers addresses aren’t listed on any blacklist check either. A VPN enables you to choose whatever the web servers see, there’s no input from your hosting provider or ISP. You should generally stick to servers in your actual location unless you need to bypass a geo block as you’ll get better performance from servers nearer you.

There are lots of these VPN services around but only a handful with the infrastructure required to completely unlock the internet.

Here’s our choice – Nord VPN, with several million subscribers it’s the best value VPN company with fast, secure servers.

What is a Bad IP Address and How Can You Change Bad IPs !