Reverse IP Provides Load of Shared Hosting
Are you on a server that shares it’s IP with many clients? Are you guaranteed a “dedicated IP” and not really sure if your host is really providing you with that service? MyIPNeighbors uses Reverse IP DNS technology to check the records that exist for your IP address.
This is a demonstration with tonybevilacqua.net, which is hosted on Site5.
Just a note on Site5, they have been a fantastic host, and I have been with them for several years. Recently I converted Lucas, a programmer for SpawnPoint over to Site5: “It’s one of most pleasant web hosting experiences I have ever had”. Anyway….
My Site5 package provides me with a dedicated IP address. I was humbled to see only domains that belong to me, pointed at this address. Although I have a dedicated IP address with my Site5 account, this is still hosted on shared hardware; nothing really interesting to see here.
This is a demonstration with toph.ca, which is hosted on MT.
Christoph hosts toph.ca on a Media Temple’s (gs) Grid-Service“. MT doesn’t provide a dedicated IP with his package - you can find out some interesting information with this tool… like who your IP neighbors are! In the query below for “toph.ca”, you can see a variety of other sites that are hosted at Media Temple.
February 26th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
“MT doesn’t guarantee a dedicated IP with his package - you can find out some interesting information with this tool… like who you are sharing your CPU cycles with!”
You are probably referring to the (gs) Grid-Service, which is a name-based, clustered hosting platform.
Having the same external IP address that other websites also use does not necessarily mean that you are sharing CPU cycles with these other sites. Even if you have a unique IP address and you’re on a shared hosting platform, you’re still sharing resources with other users. The way to isolate your site from other websites is to go with a VPS solution like the (dv) Dedicated-Virtual Server.
Additionally, it is possible to have a dedicated IP on the Grid because it is needed in order to have an SSL certificate for your website. Since the Grid is name-based and clustered, there is no need for every website to have a unique IP address, so we save the “extra” ones for sites that have a legitimate need for it.
Best,
Arman Zakaryan
(mt) Media Temple, Inc.
http://www.mediatemple.net
February 26th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
I suppose Christoph was a moderately bad example - the Grid-Service is definitely a great platform, and I know many friends who are clients of Media Template.
Moreover, my post was to point out how to discover interesting things you can find with the Reverse IP tool - like who your neighbors are! I was off in referring to “CPU Cycles” as I do realize that my Site5 account is also is shared.
That being said, in an environment that is extremely oversubscribed - such as an amateur host who purchased himself a WHM/CPANEL enabled dedicated server… might find something like… several hundred sites attached to a single IP… this might give someone a glimpse into why their blog takes 60 seconds to load.
I updated my post to reflect that, as some may think I was implying that MT oversubscribed it’s infrastructure, which from the reviews I’ve heard, it doesn’t.