IP addresses (Internet Protocol addresses) are unique identifying numbers given to each device that accesses the Internet. This allows servers to send web information to the right computer. It works a bit like how postal addresses allow mail carriers to deliver letters to the right house. Any device that accesses the Internet has a public address so that the content it requests can be sent to it.

An IP address looks like this: 198.51.100.12; four numbers separated by periods. Each number has a value of 0 to 255. IP addresses are usually grouped by “ranges,” and whole ranges are assigned to specific organizations. Telling us which specific addresses and ranges are yours allows us to identify a visit to our website from your network and to assign traffic and film views to the right school, province, etc.

If your institution has an Education Licence to use our content in the classroom, giving us your IP addresses and ranges will enable us to create usage reports that correctly represent the requests on our websites that come from your institution. It is not necessary to give us this info for the content to work, but the info is necessary for the creation of usage statistics.

Make sure you share your public IP addresses with us. Your network will have both internal and public-facing addresses; only the public ones are useful in creating our usage reports.

The information is solely used to create these reports and analyze usage of our content in the form of aggregate data. No information can be linked back to a specific individual. We never share this information with anyone, other than your own school, school board, institution, or ministry or department of education.