Why are there 2 IP addresses of customers?

My question is, when you look at an order why is there 2 IP Addresses?

The majority of the time these IPs are the same, however sometimes they are different.

My issue is this conflicts with our affiliate program. The affiliate program picks up on the first IP address when a visitor goes to the website. Then during checkout it seems the customers IP address changes, the affiliate program picks up this alternate IP address and does not issue credit for the sale.

Anyone know what is causing this?

The second IP address is the one from which the payment confirmation was received. So, if your customer is paying via an offsite processor like PayPal IPN or NoChex or some other service that doesn't complete the payment directly while shopping, then the 2nd IP address will be different.

If yours are coming from PayPal because you're using the older IPN service instead of the newer Express Checkout service, then switching to Express Checkout should solve that problem. https://www.zen-cart.com/getpaypal

DrByte:

The second IP address is the one from which the payment confirmation was received. So, if your customer is paying via an offsite processor like PayPal IPN or NoChex or some other service that doesn't complete the payment directly while shopping, then the 2nd IP address will be different.

If yours are coming from PayPal because you're using the older IPN service instead of the newer Express Checkout service, then switching to Express Checkout should solve that problem. https://www.zen-cart.com/getpaypal

Thanks for the response. I thought this was the case as well, However I had one of the customers it happened to run a test order using check/money order as the payment method and the same thing happened. Two different Ip addresses showed up. The only payment modules we have installed are the Authorize.net AIM onsite, and check/money order. So I am confused on what could be causing this.

Mostly all customers have the identical IPs however I did spot a few that weren't the same.

Any other ideas on what would cause that?

What are the IP addresses? Maybe the customer is visiting via a proxy system imposed by their internet company. AOL is well known for that kinda nuisance technology.

drbyte:

what are the ip addresses? Maybe the customer is visiting via a proxy system imposed by their internet company. Aol is well known for that kinda nuisance technology.

67.142.172.24 - 184.52.132.61

You can look up any IP address at sites like this one: http://www.dnsstuff.com/

Both of those IP addresses are from the same ISP. Must be some sort of round-robin access proxy going on with them, much like AOL does.

Perhaps you should revise your 3rd-party affiliate system to handle multiple IP addresses? Or find another way to validate the commission.