The longer version of why this site exists

About thirty years running networks, mostly for small and mid-sized businesses in northern Vermont. The work covers everything a solo IT operation covers: Windows Server and Active Directory environments, virtualization on Proxmox and VMware, UniFi and Cisco networks, VoIP systems built on FreeSWITCH and 3CX, endpoint management, backup infrastructure, and the day-to-day cycle of "someone's email isn't working" or "the printer stopped talking to the server." Along the way I've built a lot of utilities because we needed things that either didn't exist or were behind paywalls that didn't make sense for our scale.

myipcat.com started because I got frustrated with the state of free network utility sites. Every time I needed to quickly check an IP address, look up a domain's DNS records, or verify an SPF configuration, the search results pointed me to sites that were either covered in autoplay video ads, showing fake virus alerts, requiring email signups after three lookups, or all three at once. I don't begrudge running ads — this site will eventually run modest Google ads too — but the experience had degraded to the point where I was firing up terminal windows for lookups I used to do in a browser tab.

So I started building tools I actually wanted to use. Fast. No signup. No login. No autoplay. No fake alerts. Runs in the browser or in a Cloudflare Worker (close enough to the browser for practical purposes). Ad-free during launch, and when ads do get added they'll be modest and non-obnoxious. The intended audience is other network admins — people who spend their days actually diagnosing network problems and just need a fast, honest tool.

Who Tank actually is

Tank is my cat — a brown tabby with a white bib and chest, sometimes seen wearing a blue collar. He has been photographed enough to serve as the site's mascot. He does not, to be clear, have any actual involvement in network administration. He has strong opinions about door access, food timing, which windows the sun should come through, and which pieces of furniture he is allowed on. Networking is not on his list. He's the mascot because he's the cat I have and I wanted the site to have a bit of personality that wasn't corporate-cybersecurity aesthetic.

The tool names and copy sometimes reference Tank because I find it more fun than pretending I'm a faceless service. If you'd rather have a strictly business site without a cat, that's fair, but this isn't that site.

The technical stack

Everything on myipcat.com runs on Cloudflare's infrastructure. The site itself is static HTML and CSS with modest JavaScript. Server-side lookups (WHOIS, IP geolocation, DNS queries) run in a Cloudflare Worker that acts as a small backend. Data storage for shared items uses Cloudflare's KV store.

This choice matters. Cloudflare's global edge means the site is fast from essentially anywhere. Worker-based backends mean I don't have to maintain a traditional server, monitor uptime, apply security patches to a Linux VM, or worry about a database. When someone looks up an IP address, the request hits Cloudflare's nearest edge, gets processed there, and returns results without ever touching a specific server I maintain. Simple, scalable, cheap.

External APIs the tools depend on: for IP geolocation, ipinfo.io primary and ipwho.is fallback. For DNS queries, Cloudflare's public DNS-over-HTTPS resolver. For domain WHOIS, ARIN's RDAP endpoint (which auto-redirects to the appropriate regional registry). For speed testing, Cloudflare's official speed test SDK. Each is a well-known service; I don't run my own IP geolocation database or my own WHOIS database.

What "free" actually means here

The site is free to use. No accounts, no premium tiers, no rate limits for reasonable use, no upsells. Infrastructure costs are covered by Cloudflare's generous Worker and Pages plans, affordable for a hobby site at reasonable volumes.

Eventually I plan to add modest Google AdSense ads to help offset the API costs (some tools use paid tiers of external services). When ads do appear, they'll be minimal — one or two per page, tastefully placed, no autoplay video, no fake alerts. The tools themselves will always work without any interaction beyond visiting the page.

What "no tracking" means and doesn't mean

The site uses Cloudflare's built-in Web Analytics, which counts page views and referrer sources without tracking individual users. There is no Google Analytics, no Facebook Pixel, no advertising retargeting infrastructure. When you visit a tool page, the site doesn't try to identify you across sessions or build a profile of your behavior.

What Cloudflare does see is the same information any website's hosting infrastructure sees: your IP address, the pages you request, and the standard HTTP headers your browser sends. This is normal web hosting data and can't be avoided by any website.

Individual tool pages sometimes make queries to external services (WHOIS lookup queries an RDAP endpoint, IP lookup queries a geolocation provider). These external services see queries coming from Cloudflare's infrastructure, not from you directly. Per-tool privacy notes describe what data goes where.

What I do professionally

Day job is network administration. Involves a lot of Windows Server, Active Directory, Microsoft 365 tenant management, network infrastructure (mostly UniFi, plus various Cisco gear at the larger sites), and the occasional Linux system for specific needs. I also do custom software development for specific problems — mostly desktop utilities in Python or Electron, or Android tools where a mobile solution makes sense.

The tools on this site are informed by the actual problems I hit in that work. The Email Header Analyzer exists because I've read a lot of email headers debugging real customer issues. The DNS Propagation Checker exists because I've made a lot of DNS changes and needed to verify they took effect. The Blacklist Check exists because I've had customers whose sending IP got flagged and needed to figure out which lists were responsible. The Domain Infrastructure Lookup exists because NirSoft's DomainHostingView is Windows-only and I wanted the same view for macOS and mobile.

Not a professional website developer. Not a marketing operation. Not a paid staff. Just one admin building things I want to use, and putting them on the internet so other people can use them too.

Contact and support scope

The Contact page has the details. Short version: hello@myipcat.com goes to a real inbox that I read. Bug reports and tool suggestions are welcome. Requests for personalized troubleshooting of your specific network are outside what I can do outside of paid engagements. See the Contact page for what tends to get useful responses.