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This is the first time I am dealing with SSL and Dedicated Static IP /Unique IP. Now this webhost says that they will provide Unique IP (not shared with other customers) but do NOT guarantee that it will be static. Now I plan to make my website SSL enabled and install a SSL certificate. So in order to SSL enable my website, will I really need a Dedicated Static IP or will this Unique IP (without the guarantee that it will be static) be enough? What problems will I need to face if the IP is not static?

I have already bought hosting from them. And they showed me that option while adding optional services to the account (after I placed my order), so I did not even have a clue about this.

Thank you all in advance.

Devner
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2 Answers2

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Assuming you will be hosting your services behind a domain name, not the IP address (e.g. http://myservice.com, not http://192.168.0.1) the IP address for an SSL does NOT need to be static, it just needs to be dedicated. The problem you're going to have with hosting an SSL service on a dynamic IP address is that you will need to set up your DNS to 'follow' your IP address around.

There are services that can do this, they're called Dynamic DNS, but it's another hurdle that you'll find questions about on serverfault already (here or here)

Community
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Mark Henderson
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  • If the hosting company is handling the DNS they will presumably update it if/when the IP address changes. – John Gardeniers May 19 '10 at 03:27
  • @Farseeker Thank you for the reply. Yes, I will be hosting my services definitely behind a domain name. I am a bit relieved when you mentioned that its would not be a problem. But then again, when you mentioned that I will have to set my "DNS" to "follow" me, my concerns grew. How can I set it to follow me, when I do not know what it is going to be? I will look for the info on the other pages you mentioned meanwhile. – Devner May 19 '10 at 09:45
  • @John Thank you for the reply. I bought the domain from another registrar and I will be merely updating nameservers and not transfer my domain to the new host. So what will happen in this case? – Devner May 19 '10 at 09:46
  • @Devner, In this case it's the problem Farseeker mentioned in that the site will not be found if the IP address changes, unless you have a means to automatically update your DNS settings. – John Gardeniers May 19 '10 at 11:17
  • @John I am really worried now. Site not found! No static IP! Payment made to web host!!! OMMMGGGG!!!! So what would be the flawless way of making this work (including automatically updating the DNS settings)? I am trying to go through the other website and since I am relatively new, it's taking me time to get familiar with the terminology and absorb it. Meanwhile any guidance from you all will help me a bunch. Thanks again. – Devner May 19 '10 at 11:36
  • @Denver, to be honest "Site not found" could be dozens of different problems. It could be DNS, Nameserver, VirtualHosts, SSL, etc. If it's still an issue, try asking a new question on here (if you haven't already) outlining the symptoms and we should be able to help further. – Mark Henderson May 19 '10 at 22:33
  • wont he also need to setup a mail server so that the certificate reply response can be captured? – djangofan Jun 23 '10 at 22:20
  • The first link has gone dead – Andrew Myers Sep 26 '17 at 21:19
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you will be fine with what is called Name Based virtual hosts, providing SSL for your site, if you only have one site for SSL.

you will have an entry like:

<VirtualHost *:443>
    ServerName example.com
    ... more settings
</VirtualHost>

in your apache configuration. because you only have ONE host for SSL, afaik, you shouldn't run into any problems with certificates, and so on.

you may get warnings when restarting apache, i don't know for sure, because 'name based' not 'ip based' virtual hosts are not recommended, because SSL has issues determining which host from an IP the request has come from, and which certificate to use. if you only have one IP/host, you shouldn't have problems.

cpbills
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  • Thank you for the reply. I bought the domain from another registrar and I will be merely updating nameservers and not transfer my domain to the new host. So when you mention ServerName, do you mean it is nameservers or something else? If it is the nameservers, then do I write the nameserver of the current domain registrar or the hosting company? – Devner May 19 '10 at 09:50
  • the `ServerName` directive in apache refers to your hostname, like if i own the domain `example.com`, i might do `ServerName www.example.com` – cpbills May 19 '10 at 16:11