Question About Dedicated Ip Address

[rainman]

Hello!

 

What does dedicated IP address mean? Does that mean I can run my own software, listening for incoming connections at port 80? If it isn't, do you provide such service?

 

Here is the background for my request. I need to test a NAT traversal software (written by myself) which requires a server with a public accessible IP address, and can listen on any local port for incoming connection. Because it's in the test stage, a dedicated server is overkill, plus that the network traffic is quite low. Every test just need to send few messages.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Krydos]

What does dedicated IP address mean?

It means that your site isn't hosted on an IP that is shared with other sites. The most common reason to request a dedicated IP is for SSL functionality.

Does that mean I can run my own software, listening for incoming connections at port 80?

Httpd is already listening on port 80 so no other process can listen on that port, but if your software is php or jsp or asp or any of the other languages we support then yes it would be listening for connections on port 80.

If it isn't, do you provide such service?

I don't know exactly what you're needing so it's hard to say.

Here is the background for my request. I need to test a NAT traversal software (written by myself) which requires a server with a public accessible IP address, and can listen on any local port for incoming connection. Because it's in the test stage, a dedicated server is overkill, plus that the network traffic is quite low. Every test just need to send few messages.

All of our IP addresses, dedicated or shared, are publically accessible unless your clients are in China and then some of the addresses are blocked by their government and some are not blocked, but that is hardly our fault. I've never seen anyone's request to have extra ports opened on the server ever get approved by our root admin, but it doesn't hurt to ask I suppose. However, we install software all the time on the servers at the request of users, but it has to be something that would be useful to a large number of users.

[rainman]

Hi Krydos,

 

Thank you for your reply. Maybe I did not state my requirment clearly, here is another try:

 

1. Publicly accessible IP means that IP is not behind a firewall or a NAT, which is the "first-class" IP in the internet. For example, my office computer has a IP of 192.168.1.104, which is not accessible from outside world directly, unless it gets some help from a NAT traversal software.

 

2. If I undersand correctly, from your descripton, even I buy a dedicated IP, I still must listen on port 80. No other port is going to be opened.

 

3. NAT traversal is important to peer-to-peer applications. It helps two peers both behind a NAT to talk to each other. For example my home compter talks to my office computer, which are both behind a NAT or firewall. This is only possible with the help of a server with a publicly accessible IP address, The server acts as a middle man.

 

4. From point 3, you can tell that I must have the "first-hand" control over the connctions from peers. For example I may keep the server to client connection open after I send the data to client. But currently Apache or Tomcat server will close the connection to the client after processing client's request.

 

5. I know my request is an "off-the-track" request for most web-host servcing provider. But since your site is for developer with an "org" end, I thought that end has some hacking spirit inside.

 

Thanks again for your reply. I live in Singapore and no IP address is blocked unless it's a porn site.

 

rainman

[Krydos]

All of our IPs are publicly accessible. Obviously, any IP that starts with 192.168.*.* or 10.*.*.* or even 172.16-32.*.* is not publicly accessible because they are reserved private addresses. If our IPs were not publicly accessible the only people who would be able to see our hosted webpages would be computers on the same private network as us, but no one else on the internet.

 

You still haven't stated the quite simple question of what language you will be writing your software in, and yes if the language you use is hosted through apache then there are limits to how long a connection can be open and how long the scripts can run for.

 

I have absolutely no idea what you mean by "org end and hacking spirit inside." If you mean that our address is heliohost.org it is because we are a non-profit organization and that is the best fit for us. We don't have a .com because we are not a commercial entity. We don't have .gov because we aren't part of the government. We don't have .edu because we aren't an educational institution, etc etc. org has absolutely nothing to do with hacking.

 

I'm guessing you need to look into getting a dedicated server or at least a virtual dedicated server. Neither are services that we currently offer.