Overview
The following briefly covers what IP addresses do and provides more information on managing IP addresses at DreamHost.
Background
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique number assigned to every device on the Internet. Like a telephone number or street address, an IP address identifies networked devices and defines their location on a network like the Internet.
There are currently two IP address versions:
- IPv4 — The most widely deployed (and historical) protocol. This type appears as 4 groups of decimal digits (e.g., 192.0.2.235). DreamHost automatically assigns an IPv4 address to all active servers, services, and domains.
- IPv6 — A new protocol that appears as 8 groups of hexadecimal digits (e.g., 2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334). IPv6 was created to manage the growth of the Internet and allows for more addresses than IPv4. DreamHost currently offers free Unique IPv6 addresses.
How to manage an IP address
The following sections explain how to manage a few commonly used IP address features.
Finding a website's IP address
See this article for instructions on finding the IP address of your website.
Adding a Unique IP address to a fully hosted domain
If necessary, you can add a single Unique IP address to any fully hosted domain in the panel. This applies to the A record for your website URL.
Many other IP addresses are automatically created when you host a website. To update those, you would need to create custom DNS records instead.
See also
DreamHost links
Third-party links