Get Public IP Address of WinRT device in application

Question

I have the need to know the Public IP address of the device on which my app is running. The application is a Windows Store WinRT/Metro app.

Using: NetworkInformation.GetInternetConnectionProfile and NetworkInformation.GetHostNames I am able to retrieve the Local IP Address and not the Public.

In the end i have a found http://freegeoip.net/xml/ which is a public REST API for searching geolocation of IP addresses and host names. But this is not a viable solution, i was wondering if i was missing something? or if there is an easier way?

Answer 1

A simple way to find your external IP address is to use a open service on the internet.

For example this is taken from here: Getting the external IP address but adapted to work in WinRT

Task<string> result = GetExternalIP();    
string externalIP = (new Regex(@"\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}"))
                        .Matches(result.Result)[0].ToString();
......

public async Task<string> GetExternalIP()
{
   HttpClient http = new System.Net.Http.HttpClient();
   HttpResponseMessage response = await http.GetAsync("http://www.realip.info/api/p/realip.php");
   return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
}

If you try that url directly in your browser you will get a simple HTML page with this content

{"IP":"150.37.216.15"}

and then the Regex just extract the IP info 150.37.216.15