John, all operating systems that support networking, support multiple network devices (ethernet, dial-up modem, DSL, wireless, ...). All of those support using the TCP/IP communications protocol, and some devices support multiple protocols at the same time.

With that in mind, your 95 computer probably does not have an active network connection until you have connected to your ISP. When you are connected, you have an IP, when your not, you don't have an IP and you get a blank. On top of that, you can force an ethernet card to have a permenent IP address even though you are not connected to a network. MS Personal web server will force a computer to have a permenent IP even though there is no active network connection.

You can have an ethernet card connected to a network with an IP address and a dial-up Internet connection which has an IP address different from the ethernet IP. So you are getting just one IP address, when your computer may have multiple IP addresses.

On 95/98 machines, you can run WINIPCFG.EXE to show network information. There is a drop down list that shows each network device and the information about that device.

On NT/NT2000, you can use IPCONFIG.EXE at a command prompt to show network device information.

Hope that helps.

Rob.