1 recommendation |
Unless you are paying for and receiving a "Fixed" IP from your provider your IP address will be assigned temporarily by your ISP.
In this case the definition of temporary can mean you may get the same IP address after almost every power cycle of your modem or you might get a different IP address after a power cycle. The length of time your ISP reserves the same IP address is totally up to your ISP's configuration and hardware. Some people could see the same IP address for a year or more while others can change daily or even more often when they are doing maintenance on their system.
So yes, it is totally possible for you to get a "used" address since the ISP has a fixed sized pool of IP address values to give out and their routers automatically re-issue them as the current user stops using them, either from a power reset of the modem or other changes in the network. |