IP Tracking

[fatcat]

I have a small forum that discusses medical related work for college students. We have a pretty good following and only recently have had trouble with a member who was subesequently banned. However, I suspect he has gone somewhere else and created a new login due to the fact that the IP address of a very new member seems to be close to the banned one.

Is there any way to track a particular computer or am I out of luck. What i suspect is happening is that he is going to different wi-fi places and logging in each time we ban the new address he is using. (He always manages to give himself away after a week or so.) I didn't know if there was a way to prevent this since I am not a computer expert by any means.

I don't want to just ban all similar numbers since, as I'm sure you know, many college students use the free wifi services at local fast food resturants. If anyone could explain how IPs work and how I could track this individual, I would appreciate it.

 

[Trotter]

Similar IP numbers may not mean that they are from the same general location. here's the site I usually use to check an IP's location:
IP Address Finder: IP Locator, IP Lookup, IP Tracer, IP Tracker

your IP pulls up this (edited to remove the IP and host):
IP Address: xxxxxxxxx
Hostname: xxxxxxxxx.cust.wildblue.net
IP Country: United States
IP Country Code: USA
IP Continent: North America
IP Region:
Guessed City:
IP Latitude: 38
IP Longitude: -97
Organization: Wildblue Communications
ISP Provider: Wildblue Communications

You can also use the Project:Honeypot site to see if an IP has been caught by them:
Inspect an IP | Project Honey Pot

My advice would be to watch this person carefully. Most people who are banned and then try to sneak back in give themselves away eventually. They will usually go right back to their old gripes and harass the same ones they did before.