IP's can be decieving...
I didn't write the following I just read it and copy pasted.It was an answer to a question someone asked. He had been acused of having 7 screen names on the same forum,which he denied.
A lot of internet companies use so-called "proxy-servers" through which their subscribers connect to the internet.
The result is that, for the outside world, all these subscribers have the same IP address (and for the computer-illiterate on that forum that apparently means there's only one subscriber... d'oh!).
On the *inside* of the proxy, you have your own unique IP address *for that network* (probably one that starts with 10.0 or 192.168)
The only way to *not* go through a proxy is to request a static IP address (I don't even know if AOL allows that) which is accessible from the internet - but then you're opening a whole 'nother can of worms (susceptibility to DDoS attacks, worms, Trojans, messenger spam, stuff like that.
Behind a proxy, you're *somewhat* protected (and with AOL it's like sitting behind a 50 feet thick concrete wall, but that's diverging into opinion-land)) - with a static IP, you're on your own regarding firewalls and services.
- dialup customers often share IP addresses; providers assume that not all dialup customers log on at the same time.
Regardless... that IP address is an *inside* (AOL only) IP address. You're still going through the proxy server, where you have the same IP address as thousands of other AOL users according to the rest of the world.