Here is the video version, if you prefer it:
The ip command is used to display information about network interfaces (among other things). (Shotts, 2019) Your network interface is the hardware within your computer which allows it to communicate via a computer network.
Here is an example of the ip command:
mislav@mislavovo-racunalo:~$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp2s0f1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 98:28:a6:1b:c0:18 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: wlp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether 42:00:d9:4a:1e:45 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet 192.168.1.3/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlp3s0
valid_lft 81396sec preferred_lft 81396sec
inet6 fe80::5ce3:3fee:50bf:4d6f/64 scope link noprefixroute
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
First note that I have 3 network interfaces – each start with numbers 1 to 3. Also note that, in their first line, they have the keyword state following the word UNKNOWN, UP or DOWN. UP means that the interface is currently enabled. If you want to know your IP address, look up the inet field of the interface (before the forward slash). My IP address is 192.168.1.3. This is my local IP address, not my global IP address. You can Google “how to find out my global IP address” if you ever need to find your global IP address.
A side note: The ifconfig command was used for the purpose of finding out your local IP address before, but now it has been depracated. I couldn’t have used it on my Debian 10.
Thank you for reading!
References
Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 228-229