Dedicated IP on Shared Hosting - Myths and Truths

[silverbytes]

I'd like to talk about dedicated IP on shared server, and hope clarify to myself and others some points.

Shared hosting is way cheaper than dedicated servers thus many sites opt for shared servers, specially if your site is low budget, that's almost the only way to go.

By default a shared hosting comes with a shared ip. That means your website will share same ip with some 20 to 400 sites depending your hosting costumers amount and policies.

One negative aspect of shared ip is you don't control who is your neighbor, so perhaps you are sharing ip with spammers and others and surely that will have an impact on your rankings.

Buying a dedicated IP in a shared server may cost 2 or 3 dollars monthly aprox. Buying a dedicated IP will not transport you to a dedicated server (remember we said a dedicated server is expensive let's say from U$50 monthly and above, against U$4 and above for shared).

Buying a dedicated IP will just take you off the neighborhood. You can check your site neighborhood [myipneighbors.com] with some tools.

Anyway your site files will not be in a unique server where only you host files. The server will still be shared.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

PS: One thing that suprised me was to hear one hosting company saying your email smtp will still be shared with others regardless you have a dedicated ip or not. I expected the purchase of dedicated IP stop that, because is very annoying to suffer due to other's spam.

[maximillianos]

I agree with the hosting company regarding SMTP. If you are still on a shared host, but have a unique IP, you will all still share the base software on that box, including SMTP for mail.

You can get a virtual server (shared hardware/dedicated software) on a shared box and have your own IP and SMTP software... that is probably the next step up before getting your own actual dedicated server/hardware.

[LifeinAsia]

Buying a dedicated IP will just take you off the neighborhood.

Not necessarily... If the shared IP is aaa.bbb.ccc.100 and your dedicated IP is aaa.bbb.ccc.101, that may not help much (if any).

[edited by: LifeinAsia at 10:46 pm (utc) on May 21, 2009]

[thecoalman]

A lot of these spam blacklists will just list the entire block of the upstream provider, a dedicated IP will not give you immunity for being in a bad neighborhood.

[silverbytes]

Some hosting companies say your performance would be better. I wonder if is there any true in that. Will DNS resolve faster with a dedicated IP?

One hosting company says about dedicated IP on shared server: Having a dedicated ip will have your account specifically assigned one ip address. You will be able to view your website through the domain name, or by typing in the ip in the web browser. This will not increase the server performance. The ip is required if you plan on having private SSL setup on the server. Private SSL is usually demanded if you plan on doing any credit card processing online."

[silverbytes]

Will DNS resolve faster with a dedicated IP?

[JS_Harris]

No it won't unless the dedicated IP is further up the pipeline, which it usually isn't, but often the host will afford you some behind the scenes tweaks not provided to shared IP users so it may seem like it is faster.

Also, don't give search engines too little credit. If your shared IP is on a block known to be a shared host you may be granted some immunity from your neighbors once your site is established, proven... aka trusted. Search engines WANT to find good sites, even if they have lousy neighbors.

[silverbytes]

Have anybody notice any improve since moved to dedicated ip?

[kinley]

What I think will help while going on for a dedicated IP would be to request for a different C class address.

[silverbytes]

Why would anyone want a different C class?

[encyclo]

request for a different C class address

Different from what? Your dedicated IP is always going to be in someone's neighborhood, unless you own the entire C class.

As for my opinion on the many myths surrounding dedicated IP hosting, I posted in this thread [webmasterworld.com].

[jdMorgan]

Advantages of a dedicated IP address:

• You can access your server before pointing any domain to your server's IP address in DNS (You can use its IP address to upload files to your server, for example).
  
• You can access your server in case of a DNS error or failure.
  
• You can point any and as many domains as you like to the IP address of your server, and unlimited subdomains of those domains as well. You will not have to "declare" these by using the "add-on domain" function of a control panel -- everything can be done at the DNS level. The disposition of requests to those domains is entirely your choice as well; You can map them into the filespace of the server in any way you like (using mod_rewrite on Apache, for example).
  
• (Mostly academic at this point in time) Your IP-based server is accessible to true HTTP/1.0 clients, which do not send an HTTP Host header with their requests. Name-based virtual servers are not accessible to true HTTP/1.0 clients. (Note that many search robots and proxies spoof HTTP/1.0 requests, which is why I used the term "true HTTP/1.0 clients" here. These are actually HTTP/1.1 or "extended HTTP/1.0" clients.) However, HTTP/1.0 is almost entirely obsolete now.

Jim

[edited by: jdMorgan at 2:01 am (utc) on July 4, 2009]

[kinley]

@ jdmorgan: Are there any disadvantages of a dedicated IP? If I have 5 sites of a particular niche hosted together on dedicated IP, will search engines tend not to display them together in top ranking so as to provide diversified/spread-out results to the end users ( I hope you got what I meant).

[crobb305]

I have a "Dedicated IP", and that tool is showing about 6 spammy neighbors. I am wondering if I have a bad IP. A site that linked to me last week experienced a sudden drop in PR days later, from PR6 to PR3 (there is no PageRank update ongoing). Of course that could have been triggered by any number of things, but it has me wondering if I was given a bad IP.