IP Dekho Blog
Insights, guides, and straight talk about network security, privacy, and how the internet actually works.
Why Your IP Address Matters More Than You Think
Your IP address is more than just a number — it's a live broadcast of who and where you are. Here's what it actually reveals.
How to Check if Your IP is Blacklisted (and What to Do)
If your emails are bouncing or your traffic keeps getting blocked, a blacklisted IP might be the reason. Here's how to find out and fix it.
Top 5 Tools Every Network Admin Needs
These five tools aren't glamorous, but network admins who skip them spend twice as long debugging problems that should take minutes.
What Is IPv6 and Why Does It Actually Matter
IPv6 has been 'coming soon' for two decades. It's here now, running in parallel with IPv4, and understanding it is no longer optional.
How VPNs Actually Work (Not the Marketing Version)
VPN marketing is full of half-truths. Here's what actually happens to your traffic when you connect — and what a VPN can't protect you from.
DNS Explained: The Internet's Phone Book (Sort Of)
DNS translates domain names into IP addresses. But the 'phone book' analogy misses how much power — and risk — is packed into this one system.
What Is a DNS Leak and Why It Ruins Your VPN
Your VPN is running. Your traffic is encrypted. But your DNS queries might be going somewhere else entirely — and that's a serious privacy problem.
Port Scanning: What It Is and When It's Legal
Port scanning is a standard network tool and a common hacker technique — sometimes at the same time. The legality is murkier than you'd expect.
WHOIS Lookup: Who Actually Owns That Domain
WHOIS used to be a completely transparent database of domain ownership. GDPR changed that — but not as much as the registrars would like you to think.
How to Find Your IP Address on Any Device
Finding your IP address takes about 10 seconds — but there are two different addresses to know about, and most guides only show you one of them.
Static vs Dynamic IP: Which One Do You Actually Have
Most people have a dynamic IP and don't know it. Here's what that means, how to tell which you have, and when it actually matters.
How Your ISP Tracks Your Online Activity (And What to Do)
Your ISP has a privileged view of your traffic that most privacy tools can't touch. Understanding what they see — and why — is step one.
The Truth About Public Wi-Fi Security (It's Worse Than You Think)
Public Wi-Fi attacks are real, underreported, and easier to pull off than most people imagine. Knowing the actual threat model changes how you think about coffee shop internet.
Proxy vs VPN: They're Not the Same Thing
Both a proxy and a VPN can change your apparent IP address. The difference in how they work — and what they protect — is significant.
How Hackers Actually Use Your IP Address
Your IP address alone doesn't give attackers much. But combined with the right techniques and tools, it opens doors most people don't know exist.
What Is Geo-Blocking and How to Get Around It
Geo-blocking restricts content based on your location. The mechanism is simple, the implications are wide-ranging, and bypassing it is easier than most people think.
Subnets and CIDR Notation: A Plain English Explainer
Subnetting looks intimidating on paper. Once you understand what it's actually doing, the maths becomes obvious and the notation clicks into place.
What Is NAT and Why Your Router Needs It
NAT is the reason your entire household can share one public IP address. It's also the reason some things — gaming, VoIP, peer-to-peer — work poorly.
How to Secure Your Home Router (Most People Skip This)
Your router is the gateway for everything in your home network. Default settings leave it dangerously exposed — and most people never change them.
What Is an IP Reputation Score and Why It Follows You
IP addresses accumulate reputations based on the traffic they send. That reputation affects whether your emails deliver, your ads run, and your connections are trusted.
BGP: The Protocol That Actually Runs the Internet
BGP routes traffic between every major network on earth. It's also fragile, frequently misconfigured, and responsible for some of the internet's most dramatic outages.
What Is a Reverse DNS Lookup and Who Uses It
Forward DNS goes from domain name to IP. Reverse DNS goes the other way — and the uses range from spam filtering to server identification to network diagnostics.
CGNAT: Why Gamers Hate It and What You Can Do
CGNAT puts you behind a second layer of NAT you don't control. It's why your NAT type is stuck on Strict and why port forwarding stopped working.
IPv4 Exhaustion: What Happened and What's Next
IPv4 addresses ran out — officially. The story of how it happened, the hacks that delayed it, and why we're still not fully through the transition.
How Tor Actually Works (And When You Should Use It)
Tor provides strong anonymity — but it's not magic and it's not for everyone. Understanding the actual mechanism helps you decide when it's the right tool.
What Is a CDN and How It Hides the Real Server IP
CDNs make websites faster by distributing content globally. They also make the origin server's IP effectively invisible — a critical security feature most sites don't fully use.
HTTP vs HTTPS: Why That Padlock Actually Matters
HTTPS is everywhere now, and most users know the padlock means 'secure.' What it actually secures — and what it doesn't — is worth understanding precisely.
What Is a Firewall and Do You Actually Need One at Home
Firewalls filter network traffic based on rules. Understanding what kind you have — and what it actually blocks — changes how seriously you take home network security.
MX Records: How Email Routing Actually Works
When you send an email, the routing decision happens through MX records in DNS. Understanding this explains delivery failures, spam problems, and how to set up email correctly.
What Is an ASN (Autonomous System Number) and Why It Matters
Every major network on the internet has an ASN. Understanding what it is reveals how internet routing works — and why that information is useful for security and networking.
How to Tell If You're Being DDoSed (And What to Do Fast)
DDoS attacks are overwhelming and sudden. Recognising the signs early and knowing your response options makes the difference between a 10-minute disruption and a multi-hour outage.
IP Spoofing: What It Is and How to Defend Against It
IP spoofing forges the source address on packets. It's the foundation of some of the most disruptive attacks on the internet — and it still works because basic filtering isn't universally deployed.
DNSSEC: Making DNS Trustworthy (Finally)
DNS has no built-in authentication — any resolver can lie to you. DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to prevent that. Adoption is growing. It's not enough yet.
What Is a Botnet and How Your Device Could Be Part of One
Botnets are networks of compromised devices under attacker control. They power spam campaigns, DDoS attacks, and fraud — and your home device might be in one right now.
Browser Fingerprinting: The Tracking Your IP Blocker Can't Stop
Change your IP, use a VPN, clear your cookies — browser fingerprinting tracks you anyway. It's the surveillance method that most privacy tools don't address.
WebRTC Leaks: The VPN Hole Nobody Warns You About
WebRTC is built into browsers for video and audio calls. A side effect is that it can expose your real IP address even when a VPN is active — and most VPN clients don't fix it.
SSL Certificates Explained Without the Jargon
SSL certificates enable HTTPS and underpin trust on the web. The certificate system is more complex — and more fragile — than the padlock icon suggests.
SOCKS5 vs HTTP Proxy: Which One Should You Use
SOCKS5 and HTTP proxies both route your traffic through an intermediate server. The difference in protocol, capability, and appropriate use cases is significant.
How to Read a Traceroute (And What It Actually Tells You)
Traceroute maps every network hop between your device and a destination. Reading the output correctly turns a confusing list of IPs into a useful diagnostic picture.
Port Forwarding: When You Need It and How to Set It Up
Port forwarding is how you make services running inside your home network accessible from the internet. The setup is simple. The security implications deserve more attention.
MAC Address vs IP Address: What's the Difference
MAC addresses and IP addresses both identify devices on networks — but at different layers, for different purposes, with different implications for privacy and security.
Split Tunneling: The VPN Feature You're Probably Not Using
Split tunneling lets you choose which traffic goes through the VPN and which uses your regular connection. It's the answer to slow speeds and accessibility problems on VPN.
How to Check if Your DNS Is Actually Secure
Most people use whatever DNS their ISP assigned them without thinking about it. That default often exposes your browsing history, allows manipulation, and has no privacy protections whatsoever.
How Accurate Is IP Geolocation, Really
IP geolocation is used for fraud detection, content licensing, and advertising targeting. Its accuracy varies wildly — from city-level precision to being hundreds of miles wrong.
TTL (Time to Live) in Networking: A Real Explanation
TTL appears in both DNS records and IP packets, doing different but related jobs in each context. Understanding both uses makes network troubleshooting much easier.
Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: What They Are and Why They're Dangerous
A zero-day is a vulnerability that nobody knows about yet — except the people exploiting it. The timeline from discovery to patch is where real damage happens.
Network Latency: What It Is and How to Actually Reduce It
Latency is the delay in network communication. It's not the same as bandwidth, it can't be fully eliminated, and most advice for reducing it misses the real causes.
TLS 1.3: What Changed and Why You Should Care
TLS 1.3 dropped a decade of accumulated cruft from its predecessor and came out faster, more secure, and harder to attack. Understanding what changed matters for anyone running web infrastructure.
VPN Logging Policies: What 'No Logs' Actually Means
'No logs' is the most abused phrase in VPN marketing. What a VPN can technically claim while still logging everything that matters is more than you'd expect.
How to Stay Actually Anonymous Online (Not Just Kinda)
Real anonymity online is harder than using a VPN and clearing cookies. It requires understanding the full stack of tracking mechanisms and making deliberate trade-offs.