XPost: alt.comp.software.firefox   
   From: this@ddress.is.invalid   
      
   Retirednoguilt  wrote:   
   [...]   
   >  Paul,  I'm an end user and your reply lost me.  OK, given that "the WAN   
   > address is what the Internet sees for your three machines", I'll modify   
   > my question to:  what controls what is seen as my WAN address, my   
   > device, the router providing the connection to my device, or the ISP?   
      
     To keep things simple, the answer is "the ISP".   
      
     Your ISP assigns 'your' (probably temporary) IP address to the WAN   
   side of your router. So the outside world - i.e. in this case the   
   website - sees an IP address which is assigned to you by your ISP.   
      
     The spefic IP address will probably change over time, as it (probably)   
   is a dynamic IP address, but whatever the current IP address is, it will   
   always be in the range of IP addresses which is assigned to your ISP.   
      
     As to the geolocating/geofencing issue, if I use whatismyipaddress.com,   
   it reports the city of my ISP, but not my city, which is probably some   
   60km from the ISP's city. But it correctly reports the country (The   
   Netherlands), so a website could do geolocation or/and geofencing based   
   on that.   
      
   > I assume that since the W in WAN stands for "wide", it's probably not my   
   > device.   
      
     WAN means Wide Area Network as opposed to LAN (Local Area Network), so   
   simply put, your LAN is your in-house network and the WAN is the   
   outside world.   
      
     I hope this helps.   
      
   [...]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)