June 18, 2018

Why Do Unique IP Addresses Matter And What Makes Them Important?

If you have been using computers and the internet for a while, you might be familiar with the term IP addresses.

Before we discuss this, let’s first shed light on what IP addresses are.

Internet Protocol addresses are unique identification addresses assigned to each machine on the network.

Generally, IP addresses serve two functions—they act as an identification for each machine and at the same time, serve to provide the location of those machines.

Moreover, since IP addresses are unique identifiers, they facilitate the transfer of information (sending and receiving) between two computers.

The modern online environment consists of two types of IP addresses: IPv4 and IPv6.

IPv4 is 32-bits and contains 4,294,967,296 addresses. The IPv6 address space is 128-bits, containing 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 addresses.

While IPv4 was the first internet protocol to be introduced, it slowly ran out, and IPv6 came into being. The shortage of IPv4 protocols was largely fueled by the number and types of smart devices being used, each of which needed its own IP address.

Why Is It Important For IP Addresses To Be Unique?

Let’s say you create a website; you definitely wouldn’t go through the hassle of creating and setting up your own server. You would probably go for an easier solution, like shared hosting. There might thousands of other websites being hosted on the same server.

Now, we do know the risks of sharing space with other websites. If you’re sharing an IP address with another website, and if that website is blacklisted, your website could also take a hit.

However, if you go for dedicated hosting, it means your website will have a unique IP address and no other factors would impact your website’s rankings.

Similarly, when it comes to digital marketing and SEO, the importance of unique IP addresses cannot be overlooked. Having thousands of websites being linked to the same IP addresses could mean a diluted page rank, as said by Matt Cutt, Head at Google’s spam team. This makes it all the more important to invest in unique IP addresses.

We understand, it might not be possible, looking at the infrastructure updates you need to make moving to IPv6.

At IPv4 Mall, we are your one stop shop to buy IPv4 address blocks. We also help clients lease IPv4 addresses.