BurlyHost.com, Inc. offers something new and unique for our clients — IP pools! Having a dedicated IP for your site is a good thing. While shared IPs are fine, the option to have your own IP is a significant advantage in many different ways. However, for those that don’t have dedicated IPs with their plans or don’t wish to get one, we offer the next best thing to a Dedicated IP: our IP Pool!

IP Pool is a special service we offer where the hosting plan doesn’t have a dedicated IP, but you want to be on an IP that’s not shared by everyone else on the server. Our Pooled IP feature limits the total number of accounts hosted on a single IP to five accounts or less. This way, if a someone else’s site on the same shared server or reseller server gets massive traffic/heavy traffic or someone’s site is attacked, it will reduce the chances of your site being affected or someone else being affected by your site.

For example, a lot of hosts put every client on one main IP, which all sites share. This is technically fine, except for matters of providers blocking access if you have a script that needs to connect to another network/site to retrieve data, RSS feeds, gaming scores, news feeds, various XML and other data and they (the destination) have blocked access from too many connections due to another user on the same server making too many outgoing connections. Another example is RBL blocks if someone’s site sends out too many emails, since most or all accounts are on the same IP and email sends out from it.

More to the point, since we have configured the servers to send email out from the account’s own IP, this will greatly reduce the chances of your site being on a spam blacklist if another user’s script on the server is exploited by a spammer and enough emails go out before we stop the activity to result in an RBL block.

We take all measures to prevent spam outgoing from our servers and to protect our clients’ scripts (even if they are insecure) from being exploited and used as a spam gateway, but ultimately, an insecure script is the heart of the matter. We promptly track down and disable any problem scripts that are actively being abused/exploited and notify the client (and in advance, if possible), and we implement measures to prevent it from going too far, but on a shared server, there’s really no 100% effective way to prevent all potential problems (though to date, we’ve not had one single incident on any server with spam from exploited scripts or otherwise). This allows us to limit accesses per IP for better control, both in and out, which is one of the biggest issues when dealing with multiple accounts on a single IP, so we’ve broken up our IP range/class on all servers to offer this ability by default (it’s better for you and us). It makes sense, so we’ve thus created this service

This also, and more importantly, allows us to segment the sites on the server and isolate sites so one doesn’t affect the other. Such as if a site is slashdotted or has an attack launched against it, while we do this in a broad sense already, we can more accurately and specifically rate limit the number of connections to a specific site’s IP, stop or slow down web attacks and email attacks, joe-job email bounce (attacks) and so on, so the targeted site doesn’t affect other accounts, sites or services on the server, and more easily handles the mass traffic/requests so we can have our attack prevention scripts more quickly break down packet headers and help that client avert the attack on their site, and no other clients feel the negative side effects that are usually associated with it (and always in the case of a shared server IP).

Again, we offer dedicated IPs, and we take all measures to prevent problems with the very lowest hosting plans that have larger IP pools, but for the mid plan clients, we offer this service to allow clients to benefit from this feature. This also allows us to segment our shared SSL certificates so only a few specific sites. Essentially, if you know the advantages of a dedicated/unique IP, but don’t have a plan that offers it by default and don’t wish to get an IP addon, you can understand the significant benefits in both an immediate and long term and preparative nature of such a feature.

This is smart, beneficial and cost effective, so we can pass those savings on to our clients at no extra cost. This is only one of many features we have uniquely created with our clients in mind and to offer a superior service both now and in the future, with many more unique and beneficial services to come. Please contact us for further information and details regarding this and other features.