Contact
Bug? Suggestion? Tank fan mail? All welcome.
Read by an actual person. Response time usually 1–3 business days.
Helpful things to include
- Bug reports: Which tool, what you typed, what you expected, what you got. Screenshots welcome.
- Tool suggestions: What problem are you trying to solve? Concrete examples are gold.
- Reference corrections: If a port number or default IP is wrong, send us the source you're checking against.
What we can't help with
- Diagnosing your specific home network problems remotely. Try /r/HomeNetworking on Reddit.
- Bypassing geo-restrictions, DRM, or login pages.
- Tank petting requests. He has standards.
Who runs this site
myipcat.com is a solo project run by a network administrator in northern Vermont. I've spent about thirty years working in IT, mostly in mixed environments — Windows Server and Active Directory shops, Proxmox virtualization stacks, UniFi networks, VoIP systems built on FreeSWITCH, Asterisk, and 3CX, plus a fair amount of custom application development across macOS, Android, and cross-platform frameworks. This site exists because I got tired of every free IP-lookup and network-diagnostic site being overrun with autoplay video ads, fake virus warnings, and paywalls that kick in after three queries.
The tools here are the ones I actually use when I'm troubleshooting real problems: a customer's email starts landing in junk and I need to check their SPF record; a VoIP system is dropping registrations and I need to see whether the public IP is on a blacklist; a domain in DNS turns out to have been pointing at an old registrar account nobody remembered. I built each tool because I wanted a clean version for myself, and the site is where I put them so anyone else who needs the same thing can use them too.
Why email is the only contact method
No contact form, no chat widget, no ticket system. Just email. I made this choice deliberately for a few reasons.
Contact forms attract spam. Even with hCaptcha and honeypots, a public form is a magnet for automated bots looking to inject links, run scans, or probe for vulnerabilities. Email filters catch most of that noise at the mailbox level and I can review what's real in a few minutes a day.
Chat widgets create an expectation of instant response. This site is a project I maintain in evenings and weekends around a full-time network job. If you message me at 2 PM on a Tuesday I'm probably in the middle of fixing something else. Email sets the right expectation: I'll get back to you when I can, usually within a few business days.
Ticket systems add complexity I don't need. A ticket system is worth it when you have a team fielding requests. For one person, a well-organized inbox is faster and simpler.
What actually gets a response
Every email to hello@myipcat.com gets read. Not everything gets a written reply — if you send a note that says "great tool, thanks" I might not respond, but I read it and I appreciate it. What almost always gets a substantive reply:
Bug reports with reproduction steps
The single most useful thing you can send is "I did X, expected Y, got Z, using browser B on OS O." Include a screenshot if the visual result matters. If the tool involves a specific input (a domain, an IP, a header block), include the input verbatim — I need to be able to reproduce the problem on my end. A vague "the WHOIS tool doesn't work" is much harder to act on than "the WHOIS tool returns HTTP 500 for the domain example.co but works for example.com."
Tool suggestions grounded in real problems
The most useful suggestion emails describe a specific workflow I'm not currently supporting. "I have to check X and Y and Z across five different sites — could you build one that does all three?" is a much stronger prompt than "you should build a tool for IPv6." The Domain Infrastructure Lookup tool exists because someone described using NirSoft's Windows-only DomainHostingView and wishing there were a web equivalent. The Email Spam Score tool exists because a customer had a legitimate transactional email flow that kept landing in junk and I wanted something that would flag the SpamAssassin-style rules being tripped.
Corrections to reference data
The reference pages (DNS record types, common ports, HTTP status codes, SMTP response codes, private IP ranges, and so on) are maintained by hand and I occasionally get details wrong. If you find something incorrect — a port number that's off, a record type description that doesn't match the RFC — please tell me and include the source you're checking against (the RFC number, the IANA registry link, or a well-known reference). I fix these promptly.
Feedback on tone or explanation
If something on a tool page is confusing, unclear, or explains a concept in a way that made you go "wait, what?" — I want to know. I write these explanations from an admin's perspective and I sometimes assume knowledge that not every visitor has. Pointing out gaps helps me make the pages more useful to more people.
What I can't help with
A few common requests I have to decline, not because I'm being difficult, but because they're outside what one person can reasonably do.
Remote troubleshooting of your specific network: I can't log in and look at your router, examine your traffic, or figure out why your specific setup is having trouble. That's a paid consulting engagement and I don't have bandwidth for it outside my day job. For general home-network questions, the r/HomeNetworking subreddit has a huge community that's usually helpful. For business-network questions, most areas have local MSPs who can provide hands-on help.
Anything related to bypassing security controls: If your workplace is blocking a site, if a streaming service is geo-restricted in your region, if a paywall is annoying you — I don't help route around those things. The tools here are for network diagnostics, not for defeating access controls.
Data extraction or scraping requests: If you want to pull data from the tools programmatically to feed into another system, please contact me first and we'll talk about it. The site is served from a Cloudflare Worker on a paid plan (not free tier), and I pay for the API budgets that back some of the tools. Uncontrolled scraping burns through those budgets in hours and forces me to add rate limits that hurt legitimate users.
Account creation, password resets, or anything requiring identity verification: There are no accounts. Nothing to log in to. If someone contacts you claiming to represent myipcat.com and asking for credentials or payment, it's a scam.
Response times, honestly
Realistic expectations for how long you'll wait:
- Bug reports with reproduction steps: usually within 1-3 business days, sometimes same-day if I'm actively working on the site that week.
- Tool suggestions: acknowledgment within a week, but "yes I'll build this" or "no I won't" can take longer while I think about it. Some suggestions turn into tools within a month; others sit on my list for a year.
- Reference corrections: usually fixed within a few days of receiving them if the change is clear and I can verify the source.
- General feedback and questions: within a week most of the time. Occasionally slower during busy stretches at my day job.
If you sent something two weeks ago and haven't heard anything, feel free to send a follow-up. Email delivery is generally reliable but occasional messages do get lost in spam filters on either end.
Privacy of your email
Emails you send to hello@myipcat.com are read only by me. They are not shared, sold, or given to any third party. If your email contains sensitive technical details (a private IP address in a header dump, a hostname you'd rather not have public, a domain you're investigating), I don't repeat those details in public writing without permission. If your suggestion leads to a tool being built, I don't identify you as the source unless you specifically want the credit.
The email service that receives hello@myipcat.com is a standard commercial mail provider (not Google, not Microsoft — a smaller privacy-focused option). Their standard retention and security practices apply. If you have specific privacy concerns, mention them in your email and I'll answer any specific questions honestly.
A note about Tank
Tank the cat is real and lives with me. He's a brown tabby with a white bib and chest, usually seen in a blue collar. He has strong opinions about door access, food timing, and which windows the sun should come through at what times. He does not have opinions about network administration but has been photographed enough times to feature as the site's mascot. Fan mail addressed to Tank is welcome. He can't read but I sometimes read it to him. He remains impassive.