What Is the Difference between the Internal IP Address of a Server and the External IP Address?

Problem scenario
You want to find the external and internal IP addresses of your servers.  You are not sure which is which.  

Solution
The internal IP address is found by issuing one of these commands on Linux:

ip addr show
ifconfig

For Windows, open a command prompt and run this command:

ipconfig

For Linux servers the external IP address is found by running this command (assuming your server has access to the internet):

curl http://icanhazip.com

For Windows open a web browser and go to http://ipchicken.com

If you are using AWS and your server does not have access to the internet, go to the EC2 dashboard.  The IP address shown there will be the external IP address.

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