Hello
I know that the answer to this question is "no" from a technical standpoint, but what I want to discuss is whether potential customers use this as a criteria when comparing hosts.

In Europe you can't have unique Ip addressing on shared server hosting as RIPE don't allow it.
My US based services all have unique IP addressing.

I will soon have a server in London and one in the US.
I could run my UK service on name based hosting and the US on IP based, but I would prefer to keep the services the same.

Right now I have to revise my hosting plans.
Should I stick with unique IP addresses for my US customers?

Would going name based cause me to lose sales?

Its an interesting subject, isn't it.....

Any comments?

Gordon

Yes, interesting question. I wish I had my own IP, some internet real estate, something of my own...

Gordon,

We use name based hosting for all our standard web packages and I've never lost a customer to it yet, some may prefer to use their own ip address, but as you point out, ripe wont allow it, so once that is explained people are usually ok.

Regards,

Tony Lucas

LOL, it isn't your own anyway, so don't sweat it. Can be assignith to and taken awayth from you my good man.

Really, I think for the most part it isn't needed. Yes, people do look for it with packages though (I'm certain of it), but they also look for accounts with unlimited bandwidth, heh.

Just provide them a way to see their site instantly (though a subdomain of one of your domains), and I think they'll be happy. Really that seems to be the biggest reason to want one (so you can see the site instantly once you sign up for the account).

Good to see someone from xcalibre about on the boards :).

Personally i don't care if they have a static ip or not.
The main reason why people want a static ip is that they can have all the site and scripts setup whilst the domain is resolving to the new dns.

From a technical standpoint some programs or setups do require each customer to have unique IP's. Mainly on the most part it is virtual programs, such as for example Alabanza's setup of email accounts where every user can have the same login name.... of course it wouldn't work very well if they didn't have a unique IP to login to so as the user names could be seperated.

Same goes for virtual and anonymous FTP support , as well as making some control panels work with wildcards on domains and dns without an IP :).

My IP is my castle

Hi,

proftpd now supports name based hosting, including anonymous ftp servers, and it can integrate with mysql as well :), we are using it in the rollout of our new control panel, with it we're also setting up a system so that everyone gets a temporary domain of something like http://www.theirdomain.co.uk.xcalibre.co.uk as a temporary host for it, which will then be removed once the site is moved over, its not up and running yet, but should be soon. (Integrating named into mysql is a nasty job)

(Desperatly trying not to advertise here btw)

Hi Technics btw, Just stumbled across this site a month or so ago, wished I'd found it sooner :)

Regards,

Tony Lucas

It's good to see that there really is real people who work for uk webhosts. I used to think you were all robots :).

Thanks everyone,
Our windows packages are name based and customers get a domain.com/~user address to use as temporary URL.
I have never had any complaints.

Also Cpanel3 can operate name based as well. The e-mail manager prefixes the username with the first part of the domain name (not unlike the cucipop thing that Affinity use).

I will certainly consider launching the UK end without unique IP address, even though it will be on ARIN IP's initially. Better to do that to start with than have to change later on.

By the way, I am in the UK, and only 8 miles from Tony - its a small world here in Silicon Glen.

(Our UK brands are at http://www.hostroute.co.uk/ and http://uk.name-route.com/)

Gordon

Gordon,

So I see (being nosey at your site), Must meet up one of this days, whats the snow like in livi, I was down there a couple of hours ago and it was getting pretty nasty.

Regards,

Tony Lucas

Hello
Well, I just got back from Stirling (been there all day) and got stuck coming up the hill from Ecclesmachan from the M9.

Eventually we made it, but it was not a good day for driving on country roads. No sign of any grit.

Yes, I will have to pop in and try out your cafe one of these days.

Hostroute is a fairly small business. Just me, my wife and occasional other helpers. I do other Internet consulting work as well and I usually spend the 9-5 hours at a desk near Penicuik.

We also have a FWP with nearly 9000 users, a real nightmare to keep on top of, and it brings in no real money but we pick up the odd paying customer from it.

Gordon

Sounds like fun.

The cafe is a sideline, muchlike your free webhosting, it breaks even, and brings in some decent custom for us, but I expect it to shut within 6 months as we get too busy with the hosting services.

We're moving more into the managed hosting market these days, including the release of the cp for server admin.

Best continue this by e-mail otherwise people will get fed up of us nattering :)

Regards,

Tony Lucas

A word about unique IPs when hosting inside the UK.

1) We ourselves are about to open a UK Mini-NOC and will be using IPs from RIPE, the only stipulation that is made is 80% usage or above..and they are not objecting to my plans of unique IP vhosting (at least for now!)

2) However, Plan B, when RIPE start to object, is simply to have some of our Class C's from Arin routed over to the UK, thereby eliminating the IP problem completly. NB: This practice is what many of the big providers do, eg Level3, to avoid the regulations of RIPE.

Happy new year to everyone:)

I know with VDI servers, you need a private IP address in order to utilize certain features (I.E. multiple FTP accounts). However, in most cases, it shouldn't make a difference if your setup is correct.

Matt
mlightner@site5.com

I do not believe name based hosting supports SSL because of the layering. Or it may be very difficult to set-up.. ...

Hi there
What most hosts do about SSL with name based accounts is to put the server wide SSL certificate on the fixed "gateway" Ip address of the server.

Yes, you ned a fixed IP to get a Thawte certificate. I don't know about other Cerificate issuers though.

Gordon

For the record, this is an extract of the RIPE European Internet Policies and Procedures:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-185.html#toc5

---QUOTE---
9. Virtual Hosts: Sometimes a single host is assigned more than one IP address on the same interface and physical network. Often this is used to circumvent shortcomings in higher level protocols such as HTTP. Large scale assignments for this purpose are discouraged for the reasons mentioned in the paragraph above. The RIPE NCC currently assigns address space for virtual WWW servers on the condition that it be returned or used for another purpose when a version of HTTP which transmits the host part of a URL is widely deployed. If allocations or assignments for this purpose are indeed made, special allocation and verification procedures apply. Please contact the RIPE NCC for details.
---END QUOTE---

Originally posted by Rietta Solutions in this thread:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=1101

--QUOTE--
If your web hosting account runs a Unix system with Apache server, you have your own IP address, and your web host has wild card domains enabled then you may be able to use .htaccess to run multiple domains on your account. .htaccess files will henceforth be called HTACCESS in this post.

For example, if you are running firstdomain.com as your main account and want to also run seconddomain.com on your account you could use something like the following in your HTACCESS:

Code Example ...
--END QUOTE--