Don't count on whatismyip.com. Your IP <b>is</b> in the 165.165.0.0/16 subnet range. Look at the second hop on the traceroute, that confirms it immediately.
The anomaly we are seeing here is caused by Telkom's use of transparent proxy hierarchies to try to save on bandwidth. Since whatismyip.com is just a very simple web script which gets the connecting address from the web server, it's extremely unreliable.
Remember, the server will report the IP of the client connecting to it. In the case of a proxy hierarchy, the client connecting to the web server will not be the browser on your PC, but the transparent proxy highest up in the chain for traffic from your location.
The IP being reported is that of the last transparent proxy between you and the web server the script is running on. Obviously, this is not a good way to determine your IP address and should not be used at all. However, it is very handy for finding the address of the last transparent proxy your traffic is being forwarded through.
To accurately determine your IP address, simply use what ever tool is available to check the address on your local machine. Here are instructions for the most popular configurations you might find yourself on:
For Windows NT3.5, 95, 98 and Me machines:
1) Click Start
2) Click Run
3) Type winipcfg and press <ENTER>
4) Select the active PPPoE interface from the interface menu.
The IP address assigned to your PPPoE client will now be displayed, along with other useful information, like the default gateway and assigned DNS servers.
For Windows NT4, 2000 and XP machines:
1) Click Start
2) Click Run
3) Type cmd.exe and press <ENTER>
4) Type ipconfig /all and press <ENTER>
A lot of information will now be spat on to the screen. Use the right scroll bar to find the active PPPoE interface. You will also receive other useful information about your connection.
For most UNIX implementations:
1) Type ifconfig
Use your terminal's scrolling function to find the active ppp interface (you want the interface created by your PPPoE client.) You will also receive helpful information, including the address of the machine on the other end of the link, the link MTU and MRU and statistics on the performance of the link.
NOTE: On some UNIX implementations, you may have to be root to run ifconfig.
If your PPPoE client is on an ethernet ADSL router or some other kind of hardware routing and NAT device, you will need to connect to the device itself and figure out what the IP is. Check the manual of your device for instructions.
Incidentally, it might be interesting to see if the chain ends with different proxies for local and international traffic. If you have a web host which supports PHP4, you can create your own whatismyip.com on your web site, by putting the simple web script enclosed in the quote below in a file like whatismyip.php and connecting to http://www.yourhost.example.com/whatismyip.php
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
<?php
// whatismyip.php
// This is a simple script to reveal the IP address of the
// client connecting to the server.
?>
<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>IP Address Report</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>IP Address Report</H1>
<P><?php print ('The IP address of the client is: ' . $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']); ?></P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Willie Viljoen
Web Developer
Adaptive Web Development
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