What an ISP is
An internet service provider, or ISP, is the company that connects you to the internet: a cable or fibre company at home, a mobile carrier on your phone, or the network of an office, school, hotel or café. Your ISP assigns the public IP address that every website sees when you visit it.
Knowing your ISP helps when you contact support, when you compare what a site reports with the plan you pay for, when you want to confirm that a VPN is really active, or when a service treats your connection differently from others.
How this page finds your ISP
Every public IP address belongs to a block that a network announces to the rest of the internet. Each of these networks has an autonomous system number (ASN) and a registered name. This page takes the public address your connection presents, finds the block that contains it in a public ASN dataset and shows the network's number, its name and the country where it is registered.
The dataset comes from iptoasn.com, is published as public domain data and is built from global routing tables. IPVitals keeps a snapshot of it on its own server, and the page shows the date of the snapshot it used. The lookup runs in your browser, which downloads only the small data file that covers your address range.
Why the name may not match your bill
The name in the ASN record is the name registered for the network, which is not always the brand you know. The most common reasons are:
- A large provider registers its network under a parent company or a technical name, often in capital letters with a suffix such as -AS or -NET.
- Smaller and regional providers, and many mobile virtual operators, run on another company's network, so the wholesale provider's name appears.
- Business and campus connections show the name of the organization, or of the provider that hosts its addresses.
- Cloud and hosting companies appear when the traffic comes from a server, a VPN or a proxy rather than from a home connection.
When the name looks unfamiliar, the ASN is the more reliable detail: searching for the number usually shows who operates the network.
How accurate the location is
The approximate location on this page comes from Cloudflare's geolocation of your IP address, not from GPS or from your device. It is usually right at the country level, often right at the region level and less reliable at the city level.
Home connections can appear in a nearby larger town where the provider's equipment sits. Mobile carriers route traffic through a few regional gateways, so a phone may appear hundreds of kilometres away. The country where the network is registered is a separate detail: it tells you where the network was registered, not where you are.
VPNs, mobile data and shared addresses
With a VPN or a proxy turned on, this page shows the network of the VPN server, usually a hosting or data centre company, because that is the address websites see. If you still see your home provider while the VPN is connected, the VPN is not handling this browser's traffic.
Many mobile and some home providers use carrier-grade NAT, where many customers share one public IPv4 address. The ISP shown is still correct, but the address is not yours alone. If your connection also has IPv6, its network can differ from the IPv4 one, which is worth checking when you use a VPN.
Other ways to find your provider
Your router's status page usually shows the provider's name or the details of the WAN connection, and your contract or invoice names the company you pay. On a phone, the carrier's name appears in the settings under mobile network or About. Those sources tell you who you pay; this page tells you whose network your traffic actually leaves through, which is what websites see.
Frequently asked questions
Can I find out who my ISP is from my IP address?
Yes. Your public IP address belongs to a network registered to a provider, and that is what this page shows. It identifies the network, not the individual customer: only the provider can link an address to an account, and normally does so only under a legal process.
Why does it show a different company from my provider?
The registered network name can belong to a parent company, to a wholesale network your provider uses, or to a VPN or hosting company if your traffic goes through one. The ASN number helps you confirm which network it is.
Why is the location wrong?
IP location is an estimate based on where address blocks are registered and routed. Providers move blocks between regions and mobile carriers use central gateways, so the city can be wrong even when the provider is right.
Does my ISP change when I switch to mobile data?
Yes. On Wi-Fi you use the network of whoever provides that Wi-Fi; on mobile data you use your carrier's network, with a different public IP address and usually a different ASN. Run the check again after switching to see the difference.
Can my ISP see which websites I visit?
Your ISP can see which servers you connect to and, unless you use encrypted DNS, the site names you look up. HTTPS hides the content and the exact pages. A VPN moves that visibility from your ISP to the VPN provider rather than removing it.
Is my IP address stored when I use this page?
No. The provider details are worked out in your browser and shown only on your screen. Page views are counted by our own first-party service, which keeps no IP address and no cookie; the privacy policy explains exactly what it stores.