How to reverse look-up ip from e-mail address?

**ryandinan** · 08-13-2003, 09:20 AM

Hello,

I was wondering if there was an easy way to find my external ip address from an e-mail I sent from that computer.

See, I'm at work, and I need to do a remote desktop session - but I forgot to bring my home computer's external ip address with me (I had it written down on a piece of paper). I do however, have an e-mail I sent last night from my home computer (my ISP e-mail address), to myself here at work.

Is there a way I can easliy use that e-mail address to reverse look-up my ip at home? And I'd rather not pay $$ to do this

Otherwise, I'll just have to wait for my wife to get home to read back the ip for me

-Thanks for any help!

-Ryan

**SkyDog** · 08-13-2003, 09:34 AM

There's no practical way to trace an email back to the origin IP address. The best you could do is trace the message back to the originating mail server and then you would need the mail server's owner to comb the server's logs and find out what address you authenticated from at the time you sent the message.

**ryandinan** · 08-13-2003, 10:04 AM

Yeah, thats what I thought...Oh well. I guess I'll just have to wait for the wife to get home

Thanks for the info!

-Ryan

**muisejt** · 08-13-2003, 12:00 PM

check the mail header, should have a line like this in it

Received: from [your computers name] [your IP address] by [your ISP's mail server]

**SkyDog** · 08-13-2003, 02:09 PM

Originally posted by muisejt
check the mail header, should have a line like this in it

Received: from [your computers name] [your IP address] by [your ISP's mail server]

I thought most ISP's stripped out the originating host IP, but sure enough... I just checked a message and my IP was in the header. (Thanks for the correction!) This should work if the message was sent via a POP3/SMTP client (like Outlook, OE, Pegasus, or Eudora) and the originating SMTP server posted your IP in the header.

**muisejt** · 08-13-2003, 03:16 PM

just checked Hotmail, and they even keep your IP in the header

**ryandinan** · 08-13-2003, 05:03 PM

hmmm...Outlook (via exchange) seems to strip out the ip info...
All I have are the names of the senders..

BTW - this leads me to my next question..

My computer at home is connected to the internet through a cable/dsl router (internal ip of 192.168.1.1). I know the external ip that the router is using, but for some reason, when I try to connect with Remote desktop, it always fails.
I have ip forwarding turned on in the router to point to the 192.168.1.1 ip address, on TCP/IP port 0 to 80....but it's not working for some reason. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks!

-Ryan

**SkyDog** · 08-13-2003, 09:11 PM

Remote Desktop uses port 3389 if I remember correctly.

Be VERY careful if you open that port, though, as someone else could possibly establish a Remote Desktop session! If at all possible, only open it to known incoming addresses.

**muisejt** · 08-13-2003, 09:37 PM

yep 3389 is the default port, but you can change it with a simple registry edit: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;306759

you'll also have to add the port number when you connect: http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;304304

**ryandinan** · 08-13-2003, 11:07 PM

Thanks for the info guys!

Could I also use DMZ to accomplish the same thing, and without having to add the specific port number in the ip address?
I just realized that my router requires that a static ip be used if I use ip forwarding (which I dont have). However, my ip stays pretty much the same all the time - it does vary from time to time though. I guess that I'll just check the ip on days that I know I may need to do this.

Thanks again,

-Ryan

**ryandinan** · 08-13-2003, 11:09 PM

Oh and BTW..
Is there any way to test this on another computer on my home network? (any way to simulate a connection from an outside network?)
Because right now, I can open sessions by just typing in the LAN ip address (which obviosuly wont work from outside).

Thanks!

-Ryan

**ryandinan** · 08-14-2003, 12:00 AM

Cool - I got it working.
I'm using port forwarding (3389 -> 3389) via TCP to re-route to my desktop here at home. I did however need to change the ip to 192.168.1.101 (instead of 100). I'm not sure why....

To simulate connecting from an outside network, I just typed in my WAN ip w/ port number on my other LAN machine here, instead of the LAN ip (duh) - hey, Im slow sometimes with this networking stuff

And the cool thing is that I can still have DHCP enabled, contrary to what the router manual says..(not really sure why it said I needed to disable it anyway..)
So as long as my WAN ip stays what it is, I can connect from work - otherwise, I wont know what ip to type in

-Ryan

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