Compare static IP address and dynamic

When con­nect­ing the Inter­net to your home or office, the provider may offer to issue a sta­t­ic IP. True, you will have to pay extra for this — from 50 to 3 dol­lars a month. And the sub­scriber may have a ques­tion — “Is it worth over­pay­ing? Why do you need a sta­t­ic IP at all?

Let’s fig­ure out how a sta­t­ic IP address dif­fers from a dynam­ic one and whether it is worth pay­ing extra for it.

What is an IP address anyway?

The entire Inter­net works thanks to address­ing. The sub­scriber’s com­put­er sends data to the servers, which, in turn, send oth­er infor­ma­tion to the sub­scriber. And in order for this very data to be sent to the exact serv­er or sub­scriber that needs it, there is a prin­ci­ple of address­ing.

Each device con­nect­ed to the net­work has its own address. In an IPv4 envi­ron­ment, it con­sists of four sets of three dig­its. Com­put­ers, routers, and servers also have an IP address. And the provider, con­nect­ing the user to the Inter­net, gives him the same one.

So, the IP address is the address of the com­put­er by which it can be iden­ti­fied on the net­work.

It works like this:

1. Let’s say you want to vis­it our site, and enter its name in the search bar of your brows­er;

2. The com­put­er deter­mines the top node of the local net­work (router) and sends it the com­mand “Go to such and such a site”;

3. The router, hav­ing received this com­mand, for­wards it to the provider’s nodes;

4. The provider’s equip­ment access­es the root domain nodes, finds out the site address and sends the request to the site;

5. The serv­er with the site trans­mits data to the provider;

6. The lat­ter resends the data to the router;

7. The router sends data to your com­put­er.

Thus, for the Inter­net to work, it is nec­es­sary to con­stant­ly know the address­es of the com­put­er, router, equip­ment of all inter­me­di­aries, site host­ing, as well as root domain nodes. And this is sim­pli­fied! With­out IP address­ing, no net­work — local or world­wide — sim­ply could not work.

And final­ly, the “ipish­nik” can be com­pared with the usu­al postal address — well, in which the city and street are indi­cat­ed. In fact, both of them are need­ed in order for the infor­ma­tion to reach a spe­cif­ic recip­i­ent. And how this infor­ma­tion looks like — like a paper sheet or a pack­age of ones and zeros — is anoth­er ques­tion.

What are static and dynamic addresses?

The most com­mon way to con­nect to the Inter­net in EU is through the PPPoE stan­dard. That is, when con­clud­ing an agree­ment, the provider gives the sub­scriber a user­name and pass­word to enter the net­work. Then the client indi­cates them — and that’s it, wel­come to the expans­es of the Web.

On the provider side, it looks a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. When a user spec­i­fies his user­name and pass­word, the serv­er gives him an “ip” — because with­out it there is no way. This address can be tak­en from the list of reserved address­es in the sub­net or from the sta­t­ic address table.

The provider has a base of IPs that it can use (sub­net). From it, he takes spe­cif­ic data and dis­trib­utes them to users on each con­nec­tion. As soon as the con­nec­tion is ter­mi­nat­ed, this address is returned back to the pool of avail­able ones.

Such mechan­ics implies that the sub­scriber’s IP will change each time he con­nects to the net­work. Actu­al­ly, that is why it is called dynam­ic.

Dynam­ic IP address changes every time you con­nect to the net­work - for exam­ple, after each reboot of the com­put­er or router.

For most users, there is no dif­fer­ence between the types of IPs. Well, it changes and changes, what to take from it? The main thing is that the provider’s tables cor­rect­ly map sub­scribers and IPs. How­ev­er, using a dynam­ic IP can be harm­ful in the fol­low­ing cas­es:

1. When you want to con­nect to your home net­work from the exter­nal Inter­net;

2. If this IP address is com­pro­mised on third-par­ty sites, you will no longer be able to access them.

3. A sta­t­ic IP address can help solve these prob­lems. It is assigned to the user and does not change when con­nect­ed. In addi­tion, it has access from the exter­nal Inter­net!

Why overpay for a static IP?

The main advan­tage of a sta­t­ic IP address is its per­sis­tence. In fact, the entire home sub­net of the sub­scriber is rep­re­sent­ed as a serv­er that has a unique address. So, being any­where — at work, at a par­ty, on a busi­ness trip to the oth­er side of the globe — you can access your home sub­net.

This is why many pro­fes­sion­al users choose a sta­t­ic IP address. They deploy a full-fledged minis­erv­er at home, on which var­i­ous files and ser­vices can “spin”, and then they man­age all this stuff remote­ly.

For exam­ple, hav­ing received a per­ma­nent IP and hav­ing cer­tain skills in pro­gram­ming, sys­tem admin­is­tra­tion, lay­out and micro­elec­tron­ics, you can cre­ate a smart home with com­plete con­trol from the out­side — from view­ing video sur­veil­lance sys­tems to turn­ing off the light bulb in the toi­let. And all this will work autonomous­ly, regard­less of the servers of ser­vice providers.

But, again, the “sta­t­ic IP address” is an extreme­ly use­ful tool, but high­ly spe­cial­ized. Like a pho­nen­do­scope. With it, it is very con­ve­nient for the doc­tor to “lis­ten” to the patient, but it is com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble how to apply it at home.

So, unless you plan to expose your home sub­net to the out­side inter­net, a per­ma­nent IP address isn’t real­ly nec­es­sary.

Orga­ni­za­tions are also encour­aged to use a per­ma­nent IP. Based on it, you can build secure com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels with encryp­tion, tun­nel­ing and oth­er tech­nolo­gies to pre­vent attacks and inter­cept infor­ma­tion. And the cost of data trans­mit­ted through telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels can be much high­er than the cost of pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty tools.

In addi­tion, fixed IPs per­form well in peer-to-peer (DHT) net­works. But if you just some­times down­load some files via tor­rent, and do not dis­trib­ute a rare col­lec­tion of infor­ma­tion valu­able only for three peo­ple on the plan­et, then in this case you can get by with a vari­able address