If you're connected to other Cisco equipment, cdp should be running by default so use the following: "show cdp neighbors" for what ports are connected to other devices and either "show cdp neighbors detail" or "show cdp entry *" to see IP addresses of the neighboring devices.
The IP address on the 2950 has nothing to do with moving traffic through the switch. The IP address only represents the switch for Layer 3 connectivity just as a regular host/node on a single network. Usually the address is associated with a management network or VLAN, which by default is VLAN 1. All ports on the switch start out as members of VLAN 1 unless you've changed that.
HTH