How Do IP Addresses Work?

Did You Know? After the 1982 film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial featured Reese’s Pieces prominently as a treat loved by E.T., the sales of the candy spiked around 300 percent. Geek Trivia Learning To Play Which Of These Instruments Helps With Sleep Apnea? Didgeridoo → Flute → French Horn → Saxophone → Advertisement Get the #1 VPN for Olympic Streaming Having trouble watching the Olympics? Get around the restrictions with ExpressVPN and unlock Olympic content today. Watch anywhere in HD. It is high speed, ultra secure, and easy to use. It also comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Download ExpressVPN and Unblock Content Today Want to Change Your Email Preferences? At some point in the past you subscribed to the How-To Geek newsletter, but if you'd like to change the frequency or unsubscribe, you can do so by clicking the button. Change my Subscription (or unsubscribe) Today's How-To Geek Articles Why Do Old Game Consoles Look So Bad on Modern TVs? How to Sync Your Contacts Between All Your Devices: iPhone, Android, and the Web How Do IP Addresses Work? What Are Progressive Web Apps? What Is HEVC H.265 Video, and Why Is It So Important for 4K Movies? How to Fix a Blank White Screen When Setting Up the HomePod How to Set Up the Apple HomePod How to Remove a Smarthome Device from Alexa How to Shrink Your PC Game Files With CompactGUI and Save Drive Space How Does Android Know a Wi-Fi Network Is Fast or Slow Before I Connect? Who Is “Scam Likely,” and Why Are They Calling Your Phone? Phones Are Better Without Removable Batteries Today's Review Geek Articles Follow the Winter Olympics Medal Count With This Low-Key Educational Map 7 Fantastic Board Games for Two Players Geek Comic Today's Tech Term Humanware The term Humanware refers to hardware and software that has been specifically built with a focus on the user interface, user needs, user capabilities, and user experience rather than the tasks the products are meant to accomplish. What We're Reading This section contains what we're reading from around the web, along with commentary from our editors. Think of it like your daily digest of the most interesting things online. Apple outsold the entire Swiss watch industry in 2017 People think of the Watch as a flop, but it's by far the best selling watch on the planet. [Business Insider] Why Paper Jams Persist Paper jams seem like a trivial problem, but they're not. Teams of advanced researchers have been trying to solve jams for decades. [The New Yorker] Google's Next Android Overhaul Will Embrace iPhone's 'Notch' Google's also planning to better integrate Google Assistant, but the Notch part is funnier so expect to see headlines about it. [Bloomberg] Why Do Old Game Consoles Look So Bad on Modern TVs? Old game consoles are great. Not just because there are plenty of old games that are still worth playing, but because the simpler electronic designs of cartridge-based systems tend to be much more resistant to wear and tear than modern disc-based consoles, plenty of them are still around and in great working condition. Read This Article → How to Sync Your Contacts Between All Your Devices: iPhone, Android, and the Web How many times have you seen a Facebook post from a friend asking for numbers because they got a new phone and lost their contacts? Here’s how you can completely avoid new phone, who dis?—regardless of whether you use Android or iOS (or both). Read This Article → How Do IP Addresses Work? Every device connected to a network—computer, tablet, camera, whatever—needs a unique identifier so that other devices know how to reach it. In the world of TCP/IP networking, that identifier is the Internet Protocol (IP) address. Read This Article → What Are Progressive Web Apps? Ever wish web apps behaved more like real apps? Progressive Web Apps are a new technology that’s aiming to make that happen. Read This Article → What Is HEVC H.265 Video, and Why Is It So Important for 4K Movies? It’s taking a while for this new technology to become ubiquitous, but it’s happening—4K UHD Blu-rays use HEVC, VLC 3.0 makes HEVC and 4K videos more watchable on your PC, and the iPhone can even saved recorded video in HEVC to save storage space. But how does it work, and why is it so important for 4K video? Read This Article → How to Fix a Blank White Screen When Setting Up the HomePod Setting up the HomePod is pretty easy, and only takes a couple of minutes. However, if you’re coming across a mysterious blank white window during the setup process, here’s how to fix it. Read This Article → How to Set Up the Apple HomePod Apple’s HomePod smart speaker is finally here. If you bought one and are eager to get going, here’s how to set it up. Read This Article → How to Remove a Smarthome Device from Alexa Whether you’re getting rid of a smarthome device in your house or just don’t want to use Alexa with it anymore, here’s how to remove a smarthome product from your Alexa account. Read This Article → How to Shrink Your PC Game Files With CompactGUI and Save Drive Space Developers of PC games, you’re getting kind of sloppy. Game installations have ballooned into drive-filling behemoths. Maybe 10 gigabytes for Far Cry 3 doesn’t sound like too much…until you add 67 gigabytes for the new DOOM, and 80 freakin’ gigabytes for Shadow of War. Pretty soon, even the most capacious drives start to feel a little snug. Read This Article → How Does Android Know a Wi-Fi Network Is Fast or Slow Before I Connect? Google recently introduced a new feature into Android 8.1 Oreo that displays how good a public Wi-Fi network is before you connect to it. Using just simple terms like Slow, OK, Fast, and Very Fast, it will let you quickly gauge whether a network is worth connecting to, or if you’re better off just sticking with mobile data. Read This Article → Who Is “Scam Likely,” and Why Are They Calling Your Phone? If you’ve received a call from someone your caller ID identifies as “Scam Likely,” you’re probably using T-Mobile or MetroPCS. Your cellular carrier is warning you that there’s probably a scammer on the line that will attempt to trick you. Read This Article → Phones Are Better Without Removable Batteries You can speed up your iPhone by replacing the battery, but you’ll have to take it to Apple, since the battery is not designed to be user-replaceable. This has left people wondering whether they’d prefer removable batteries. I’m here to say: you wouldn’t. Read This Article → Advertisement Get the #1 VPN for Olympic Streaming Having trouble watching the Olympics? Get around the restrictions with ExpressVPN and unlock Olympic content today. Watch anywhere in HD. It is high speed, ultra secure, and easy to use. It also comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. Download ExpressVPN and Unblock Content Today