An IP address is a number that says where traffic should go. Every device that talks to the internet has one, in the same way every letter needs a delivery address. Without it, no router would know where to send a reply.
Public and private
You almost always have two at once. Inside your home, your router hands a private address to your laptop, phone and TV — often something like 192.168.1.14. Facing outwards, your whole household uses one public address issued by your provider. Websites only ever see that public one.
What an IP address does tell you
- Which network announces it on the internet — the autonomous system, or ASN.
- Which organisation registered that range with a registry.
- Which country the range is registered in.
- Which hostname the operator has attached to it, if any.
What it does not
An IP address is not a name and not a directory entry. It identifies a network, not a person. Only the provider knows who was using an address at a given moment, they keep that record only as long as they are obliged to, and they release it solely on a valid order.
Location is an estimate
The location shown on this site comes from the registration of the range: the country the provider applied for it in. That is a fact of record. Anything finer — a city, a street — is a third-party estimate, and with Dutch providers those estimates are regularly wrong, because a range is registered centrally and handed out across the country.