Heres an example, Lets say person 1 and person 2 like to play the same game, person 1 gets IP banned for botting in the game but does person 2 get affected? lets say they both use different pcs but the same wifi, what happens?
32 Answers
When you are connected to a home network, either on wifi or by cable, you connect via your internet router. This router has a single public IP address (you can see it here ).
This is the only IP address that is visible to any system outside of your home network.
When you have multiple devices on the same home network they all connect out to the internet with the same public IP address. The internal IP address you have is hidden from the outside world.
When you connect to a remote internet service, an online game for example, they will only see your public IP address.
So in your example Person 1 and Person 2 look exactly alike to the game service and have the same IP address, and so when Person 1 gets an IP ban that ban will affect anyone on that network regardless of the device they are using.
Banning IPs doesnt really work.
First off, for most home internet users, public IPs are dynamic. This means one day your public IP might be 1.1.1.1 and the next day it could be 2.2.2.2. Therefore banning 1.1.1.1 isnt very effective.
Secondly, the game company is well aware that multiple unique and non-affiliated people might be using the same public IP. For example, if an entire college dormitory (or multiple dorms) used a single public IP, banning that IP could prevent hundreds or thousands of people from connecting. Obviously, this would be unacceptable.
So how does a game company ban an individual? Obviously, they dont publicize the information, as to not allow people to try to bypass their methods. However, it is safe to assume they use an assortment of methods to uniquely identify a player. IP address, ISP, geolocation, identifying information from the players computer, installed hardware and software, serial numbers, username, registration information, even the software can make a unique key, etc. The game company can very effectively uniquely identify someone.
Do people get incorrectly banned? Yes, it can and does happen.
