Difference between unique and shared IP

[nancyb]

Is there a difference between unique IP and dedicated IP?

Just trying to learn some stuff I should have learned a long time ago ;)

[JamesR]

From my understanding I would say no.

One thing about this industry is that people tend to make up their own terminology. If you are ever confused, especially with dealing with a hosting company, don't be afraid to ask for clarification.

[bird]

The problem is, that a host who is hosting many sites on the same IP (name based hosting) can make many more mistakes than one who allocates a seperate address to each one (IP based hosting). Those mistakes can lead to search engines getting confused about which site is which. And this doesn't even take into account that some engines get it wrong once in a while even when the host set it up correctly.

In summary, while in theory both approaches were designed to reach the same goal, experience tells us that one carries more risks than the other.

[Air]

>a difference between unique IP and dedicated IP?

From a purely semantic point of view there is a difference. An IP that is to be routed over the internet by definition must be unique, however it can be shared. A dedicated IP OTOH implies that it is both unique and that it is used only by you.

It is also important to differentiate between web servers and web connected clients, since these IP terms could have a different inference depending on what we are talking about.

Semantics aside, I agree with James considering what I understand to be the spirit of the question.

[lorax]

Well the title of this thread mentions a shared IP instead of a dedicated IP. These ARE different. Shared IPs rely on the Domain Name (DN) to determine which webspace to point the request to but many DNs can share the same IP.

[IanKelley]

I'm a little confused by this topic... Of course there's a difference between a shared IP and a dedicated one. I'm having a hard time seeing how it's made up terminology... Not to say that there isn't a lot of that going around :-)

Unique IP: Your website has it's own up address, unique throughout the internet. You can access your site either via its domain name or its IP.

Shared IP: Your website is part of a group of websites whos domains all resolve to the same IP address. As someone already mentioned, there are still occasional search engine problems with shared IPs.

Shared IP hosting is generally much cheaper so if cost is an issue it's a better choice. Problems are fairly rare.

If cost isn't an issue you want your own IP because it's cooler that way ;-)

[lorax]

If cost isn't an issue you want your own IP because it's cooler that way

And your DN must resolve to a unique IP to use SSL!

[Slade]

You must have a unique IP in order to run your own anonymous FTP or SSL certificate.

Stacking sites on a single IP conserves addresses, and is currently a good thing.

[nancyb]

Thanks all. My original question really was to the difference between a unique and dedicated IP, not shared and unique. I wanted to know if there was any subtle difference in the nonemclature of these terms.

This thread was moved to this forum from another discussion and the title given is a little misleading to my actual question. However, it was still a good move here as the difference between the shared and unique IPs has been fully explained.

Still want to know, though, since some hosting companies use the term "unique" and others use "dedicated", if there is any subtle difference I should be aware of between these two terms.

[mivox]

I would think that unique and dedicated would mean the same thing: your site is the only one using its IP address. If in doubt though, ask the host exactly what they mean by it.

[IanKelley]

oops... I misread your post :-)

Not that I re-read it... made up terminology for sure.