Security has always been a great concern on the Internet and public and private networks. Because cybercriminals and cyber threats have been rapidly increasing. Cybercriminals target the IP addresses of individuals, domains, and servers. Because IP addresses are unique identifiers for devices that connect to the Internet. So, individuals or organizations that use dedicated IPs should be careful when utilizing them. Let’s look at the dedicated IP, its technologies, and the future it holds.
What is a Dedicated IP?
Dedicated IPs are unique internet protocol addresses in bit format that are assigned to devices for identifying them on the Internet. That’s why dedicated IP addresses are also known as static or fixed IP addresses. A dedicated IP only belongs to the devices, users, and servers to which it is assigned via dedicated servers and private gateways. Also, static IPs are invariant and they can’t be changed or moved. Meaning that your IP address stays the same whenever and wherever you connect to servers. However, dedicated IPs shouldn’t be confused with local IP addresses since they are separate from each other. Therefore, dedicated IPs also ensure identity protection and data privacy online. In addition, dedicated IPs provide agile access.
For the personal use of VPN, static IPs also may be used as a method for passing VPN blocks and IP blocklisting. But note that businesses mostly use static IP addresses for several cases regarding email, database, and VPN servers, operations with FTP, web hosting services, and so on.
Why Use Dedicated IP Addresses?
Nowadays, companies have a high number of remote-working employees. Large companies deal with a high concentration of employees accessing company networks and data outside of their premises. To achieve that companies configure virtual private gateways with dedicated IP addresses on their employees’ devices. Because of high remote access rates, VPNs on every device should be configured in a way that their employees will easily get authenticated and gain secure access to company networks in order to prevent unauthorized access.
With dedicated IPs, businesses utilize IP whitelists to control who can access their networks and sensitive data outside of the premises. Also, companies can ensure their remote working employees' security because their dedicated IP address will be solely used for accessing the business network and is separate from their local IPs. In addition, many VPN alternatives for business encompass dedicated IPs. So, you can get the most benefit from using dedicated IP addresses while ensuring your business network security with VPNs and extra security solutions.
Also, dedicated IP addresses are crucial when employees want to access their office devices remotely from the comfort of their own homes. If the IP addresses of employees’ own devices changed with every connection, employees would need to know the new dynamic IP address to access every time. That’s why dedicated IPs ease remote access for employees since IP addresses stay the same.
For businesses, hosting a website also requires using dedicated IPs. The reason is that router settings are configured with IP addresses to forward requests correctly. Otherwise, routers wouldn’t know which device, or IP address, is hosting a website. So, the website would be unreachable. That’s why DNS servers utilize dedicated IP addresses.
Latest Developments in Dedicated IP Technologies
Since dedicated IP addresses are used with specific purposes for certain cases, it is only used when necessary. But even then the capacity of dedicated IPs is limited in IPv4 and the security can be inadequate sometimes. So, new technologies have been or are being developed for dedicated IP currently. The latest developments in dedicated IP technologies include IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) and DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) for increasing the capacity of IP addresses and security.
IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6)
IPv6 is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol. In contrast to the previous internet protocol version IPv4, IPv6 improved routing, addressing, authentication, privacy, quality-of-service capabilities, support options, and header format simplification. One of the most crucial improvements is the routing and addressing capabilities. Internet Protocol version 6 implemented a 128-bit size for IP addresses rather than 32 bits size in IPv4. In IPv4, four groups of 8-bit binary code represented IP addresses. IPv6 utilizes eight groups of 16-bit binary code.
Now that IP address sizes increased from 32 bits to 128 bits, possible variations of unique IP addresses also increased from 4.3 billion to 340 undecillion. In other words, the number of addressable nodes rose dramatically with the latest technology. That’s why the current addressing capabilities increased the number of possible dedicated IPs. IPv6 provides simpler address autoconfiguration and enhanced multicast routing capabilities.
Also, IPv6 simplified the header format by dropping some header fields or making it optional. Header format simplification allows IPv6 to reduce packet handling processing costs and minimize the bandwidth cost of the header. IPv6 optimized the length and size of IP addresses. So, IPv6 improved the support of IP header options while allowing more efficient forwarding. These developments offer greater flexibility for the future.
DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extension)
Domain Name System (DNS) is a structure that helps to convert domain names into IP addresses for routing traffic to its destination across the Internet. In DNS, the process of conversion and communications are done by clients called stub resolver and recursive resolver. When a client requests to find information on a certain domain name, a recursive resolver sends iterative DNS queries to multiple different authoritative servers to acquire its IP address. However, the acquired information has no way to be verified as authentic in DNS. That’s why DNS itself isn’t secure. The recursive server only verifies whether the same IP server responds after it sends queries to authoritative servers and caches the response. But the response packet’s IP address source can be forged.
DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extension) resolves the lack of authentication of DNS by using public/private key cryptography for DNS data to be signed digitally by its owner. So, the owner of DNS data digitally signs and encrypts their data with the owner’s public key and transmits the response packet with its public key. This ensures the response packet is in fact sent by the owner's authoritative name server. Also, DNSSEC provides data integrity protection besides data origin authentication. Data integrity protection ensures that the data in the DNS response packet isn’t tampered with during the transmission. In this sense, DNSSEC secures and authenticates the IP addresses of the domain names.
Final Remarks
Dedicated IPs have a tailored purpose for their use. Routing and addressing capabilities increased, and the previous concerns of security were resolved with the latest IPv6 and DNSSEC technologies. Now that new technologies are developed, dedicated IPs hold greater flexibility and usage in the future.
