When you try to access any website by typing the address: www.xyzdomain.com, this address is translated into numbers (called an IP address) and then the computer is directed to that IP address which is the resultant website. It is important to know that every website on the internet is found by its IP address and not by its domain name. In this article, we will discuss the difference between dedicated IPs and shared IPs and explain why dedicated IPs are important.
Dedicated IPs and Shared IPs
You can access any website by simply typing the IP address and it will take you straight to the website. But it is important to remember that not every single website has its own specific IP address allocated. For instance, every single website on this server does not use different IP addresses.
For example, you might see xyzwebsite.com and abcwebsite.com using the same IP address. So, what happens is that when xyzwebsite.com is settled into the IP address, the person looking for xyzwebsite.com arrives at the server; the server then realizes that the person is looking for xyzwebsite.com and sends that page to the person requesting it.
Using more than one website on an IP address is called sharing IPs or a Shared IP address. If a website has its own specific IP address and shares it with no one else, it is called a Dedicated IP address.
You can simply access a website with a dedicated IP address by using its IP address alone. On the other hand, you can’t access a website using a shared IP address by typing in the IP address alone because when you type in a shared IP address you arrive at the server but the server can’t recognize which website you want because you haven’t mentioned it which domain name you want.
One common reason for having a dedicated IP address is that you can only use SSL encryption on a dedicated IP address. For a person to send sensitive data over the internet at times this data must be encrypted to stop someone from intercepting the data. You can only use this encryption (called SSL) when the website has its own IP address (dedicated IP). It doesn’t work on a shared IP.
Why Dedicated IP Address is Important?
Websites that have dedicated IP addresses are more reliable and more secure. Most web hosting providers nowadays host thousands of websites onto one server. And because IP addresses are in short numbers, they will usually have all of the websites that are on a server share one IP address. This method is pretty critical as it will endanger the security and functionality of each website on the server.
If your website is sharing an IP address with 1,000 other websites on a server and one of those websites gets blocked or blacklisted, all 1,000 of those websites, including yours, would be blocked or blacklisted as well.
By having your own dedicated IP address, your website would be unaffected by the other websites that are on the same server. If a website on your server gets its IP address blocked or blacklisted, it would not harm your website since it’s not sharing the same IP address.
In simple words, when you have a dedicated IP address, your website is not affected by the other websites that are sharing the same server.
