Get external IP (C#/CSharp)

This CSharp (C#) code snippet shows how to get the external IP address (IPv4) of a machine (i.e. dialup connection IP). To achieve this we get all ip addresses of the machine and compare them against the local address ranges (10.0.0.0/24, 172.16.0.0/16, 192.168.0.0/16 and 169.254.0.0/16).

 

private IPAddress GetExternalIPAddress()
{
    IPHostEntry myIPHostEntry = Dns.GetHostEntry(Dns.GetHostName());

    foreach (IPAddress myIPAddress in myIPHostEntry.AddressList)
    {
        byte[] ipBytes = myIPAddress.GetAddressBytes();

        if( myIPAddress.AddressFamily == System.Net.Sockets.AddressFamily.InterNetwork )
        {
            if (!IsPrivateIP(myIPAddress))
            {
                return myIPAddress;
            }
        }
    }

    return null;
}


private bool IsPrivateIP(IPAddress myIPAddress)
{
    if (myIPAddress.AddressFamily == System.Net.Sockets.AddressFamily.InterNetwork)
    {
        byte[] ipBytes = myIPAddress.GetAddressBytes();

        // 10.0.0.0/24 
        if (ipBytes[0] == 10)
        {
            return true;
        }
        // 172.16.0.0/16
        else if (ipBytes[0] == 172 && ipBytes[1] == 16)
        {
            return true;
        }
        // 192.168.0.0/16
        else if (ipBytes[0] == 192 && ipBytes[1] == 168)
        {
            return true;
        }
        // 169.254.0.0/16
        else if (ipBytes[0] == 169 && ipBytes[1] == 254)
        {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}


private bool CompareIpAddress(IPAddress IPAddress1, IPAddress IPAddress2)
{
    byte[] b1 = IPAddress1.GetAddressBytes();
    byte[] b2 = IPAddress2.GetAddressBytes();

    if (b1.Length == b2.Length)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < b1.Length; ++i)
        {
            if (b1[i] != b2[i])
            {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }
    else
    {
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}