Shared versus Dedicated IP Hosting
Dedicated IP address also known as static IP means that a website has its own separate IP address. Whether you type in your URL or the numeric form of its IP address, both will bring you to the same domain.
Shared IP address means that multiple websites share the same IP address. Web servers can determine by the domain entered in a user’s browser which website is being requested. Typing in the IP address will bring you to some kind of generic page instead of the specific site you want.
Generally, having a website on a shared IP address does not harm a website but a Dedicated IP address has it’s own use. A dedicated IP is needed for Anonymous FTP access, or for site having own Private SSL Certificate.
Another benefit of having a dedicated ip address is being able to access your site through the IP address directly. For example:
Dedicated IP account: 67.19.72.118
Shared IP account: 67.19.72.116/~youraccount
It is also believed that sites on a dedicated IP address are favoured more by the search engines over the sites on a shared IP but it’s just a myth. In most cases, this doesn’t affect sites on a shared IP. Dedicated IP hosting is required if you need to have some sort of special access to your website, like SSL or Anonymous FTP. If you have no special requirements, then a shared IP will work fine under most conditions.
PHP-MySQL Hosting said,
November 15, 2006 @ 11:31 pm
It is believed that if some other users on the same ip address are active in spamming or maybe some site on the shared ip address was hacked and used for bad purposes, this can cause the shared ip address to be put in one of the ip blacklists which is not good for sites which are on the same ip but not involved in any kind of spamming or other unethical practices.