The next time I get a phone call to go over hacker clean up, server hardening, server administration where the prospective customer is more concerned over the $100.00 per hour rate than the problem costing them customers and potentially their business, I hope remember to share with them this article.

Imagine reading Service Suspension – Ongoing unanswered abuse complaints thinking to yourself, the person is in a jamb…. I hope they get someone who can really help them (maybe we could, not sure), then later on reading the person who initiated the post also runs a “All you can Eat” (i.e. unlimited support tickets, unlimited labor time) server administration business where they advertise a long list of what they can do for you for just $15.00 per month. I guess, they are so packed with work they could not solve their own problems.

Imagine, for just $15.00 per month you “24/7/365 USA-Based Technical Support” plus “24/7/365 Server Monitoring (5 Minute Intervals)” of your servers plus “Guaranteed 15 Minute Response On Monitoring Alerts” and so much more… sounds like a great deal? Right?

Now, I’m sure if you did a study of people who have heard and even believe in the quote, “you get what you pay for,” or variations of it, the percentage would be high.

Yet, how many actually do their homework to determine if something is really to good to be true?

For example, would you know right away that $15.00 per month for 24×7 coverage 365 days per year with a guaranteed response time of 15-minutes and unlimited administrator work (i.e. unlimited hours of work per month) was a deal too good to be true?

What if they removed the word, “unlimited,” and only included one hour per month? Would it then be more realistic?

In order to answer that question, what’s the going hourly rate for a server administrator? For a security administrator?

In the United States, for a server administrator, the going hourly rate ranges from $30.00 per hour to $52.00 per hour; for security administrators, the hourly rate ranges from $38.00 per hour to $56.00 per hour. In both cases, that doesn’t include benefits.

If a company is saying you get just even one hour for $15.00 when the going rate for an experienced party is $30.00 to $38.00 at a minimum….. get the picture?

You might get marketing speak that the employees multi-task and can work on many tasks at the same time… but isn’t that like someone who worked 2,000 real hours putting down 6,000 billable hours?

What are your thoughts on this subject? Did you purchase time thinking the rate was good or even average only to find out you were taken in by a “too good to be true” event? Let us know your thoughts below.

if you could imagine a refrigerator whose contents were a complete mess or even a room that was an organizational disaster, then open the door, throw in a magic ball of yarn, close the door, and then open the door again… only to be amazed about how well everything is organized and clutter free, you would get a visual of the what CloudLinux allows you to do on the server level.

If you’ve read previous articles I’ve written, you may get the hint I like dancing, and dancing like concepts such as when I wrote a two part series dealing with The Security Dance (part 1), and Taking Charge of the Security Dance (part 2).

CloudLinux is the same as you have two primary dance partners — visitors to Web sites hosted on servers running CloudLinux, and the hosting provider making use of CloudLinux.

Hosting providers who set up and use CloudLinux, when push comes to shove, have two choices for how they will use CloudLinux as part of their hosting infrastructure:

1. As a means to provide an extremely stable and reliable environment where CloudLinux will only trigger if there is outright malicious abuse.
2. As a means to cram as many web sites onto the server to achieve what is called in the industry, site / server density, as possible. In this area, CloudLinux can increase the capacity of a server anywhere from two to ten fold.

The visitor perspective on these two choices come down to what I’ll refer to as “light handed throttling” where the touch is so light real visitors with zero malicious intent will not know the server is being monitored in real time; and, “heavy handed throttling” where visitors may see growing delays in browsing through pages, be told the site is under maintenance (when it is not), or get a variety of errors ranging from time outs to internal server errors 403 and 500.

I’ve written about the impact of heavy handed throttling in an article titled, Does cheap web hosting lead to lost revenue?

Yet, just as CloudLinux can be used by cheap hosting providers to focus on continuing to be cheap, CloudLinux can also be used by value hosting providers to increase the stability of their environment.

Picture a small business steward who wants to learn rock climbing in an area known for dangerous birds to swoop in and potentially startle the new climber causing them to fall. Now imagine an environment where they still have the ambiance and yet no worries as such malicious activity is kept at bay.

That’s the focus we take with utilizing CloudLinux on our fully managed shared hosting servers. Light handed throttling that valid visitors never see, feel, or sense; and only coming out when a malicious bird would want to swoop in to cause someone to fall or stumble.

As a visitor to Web sites which would you prefer? The hosting provider who is using heavy handed throttling so they can cram as many sites onto a server as possible so they can justify very low prices? Or the high value provider who always wants the visitor to have a fast, reliable experience? Let us know in the comments below.

Please contact us if you have an interest in either using CloudLinux on servers you host through SoftLayer or other data centers, or about becoming one of our satisfied small to medium business customers.

I also hear the variations of the above that often come in the form of, “my _______ told me I needed a dedicated server; what do you think?”

Let me share with you some thoughts and guidelines which will hopefully help you, if you are in the position of asking this question for your organization.

Oh, before I forget, let’s do some simple house keeping first.

1. Shared hosting is where one to many sites from different customers are hosted in the same environment (which in today’s age, could be in the cloud, one or more dedicated servers, or even one or more virtual machines). This environment is very similar to an apartment complex or condo where a number of resources are shared among the consumers.
2. VPS or virtual private server is where a slice of a cloud or dedicated server is provisioned for use by one customer.
3. Dedicated is where one to many physical servers are provisioned for use by one customer.
4. Cloud is where customers can provision off the exact resources they need within the scope of the provider; and modify what they need on demand (or close enough).

While stability in the cloud continues to improve, most of this article is going to be dedicated to the 1st three of the above as most of our customer base are businesses where stability and reliability matter more than being on the cutting edge of technology.

Let me walk you through some what if statements that generally lead to the type of hosting you will need.

What if I know exactly what resources — RAM, hard drive space, CPU power, bandwidth, etc. — I need, and I love to micromanage (I’ll be sure to check x times per y period if I need to add or reduce specific resources)? Well, then your best bet would be Cloud hosting where you decide what you need, pay for only what you use, and you have the ability to spend your time micromanaging the solution.

What if I know the specific server (i.e. web server, email server, database server, etc. — which is very different from end user applications such as WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal) software I want to run, and I want to have version control of the server software? Then you are looking at Cloud, Dedicated, or VPS.

What if I want to manage my own hosting environment? Then you are looking at Cloud, Dedicated, or VPS.

Ok, I’m a developer (or my developer shared) and I’m ok with shared hosting, but I know in advance my custom (often site-based) application(s) will require 30 or more simultaneous mySQL connections, at least 256 MB of dedicated RAM, and 50+ simultaneous Apache clients per second. What do I need? Chances are high you are looking at Cloud, Dedicated, or VPS. The more the RAM, mysql connections, and processes (overall, not just Apache), the higher the probability you would need Cloud or Dedicated.

What if I have a brand new site? Then shared hosting will probably fit you for a period of time.

What if I will be running stock site-based software such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla? Then shared hosting will most likely fit you.

What are the pros and cons of each type of hosting?

Cloud, Dedicated, and VPS — unless specifically provided as a managed service (and then you need to ask what is being managed?) — puts you in control of the hosting environment. You and your team are the security administrator, the server administrator, and the general house keeper.

The pro for Cloud, Dedicated, and VPS is sharing is limited (for Cloud and VPS there is still sharing of the physical hardware involved to a degree) to non exist (dedicated, it is all yours). You often get to run the operating system and version of your choice, the web server and version of your choice, the database server and version of your choice, and so on.

Shared hosting often comes with management; and if you are with solid company between a hosting automation system and their support, your hands are held through the years.

The con for shared hosting is that if you have special needs for the server-based software, you are at the mercy of whether the provider can meet those needs without impacting their other customers or not. In the latter case, you often have the choice to upgrade to a VPS, Dedicated, or Cloud; and most providers who offer multiple types of hosting will provide free migrations from one of their platforms to another (just be sure to ask rather than assume).

What about you?

What has your experience been in terms of finding out the type of hosting you need?

What type of hosting are you using now? Why did you pick that type of hosting?

Please use the comments to let us know.

Thank you.

What are some key points between a cheap (aka budget or commodity) provider and a quality (aka premium) provider?

Let me share with you some points shared recently in a web hosting provider forum I monitor:

These are general statements, not valid for all situations and not valid for all Premium or Budget providers.

– Premium providers have a robust network setup, budget providers usually have a collapsed core/distribution setup.
– Premium providers have multiple 10 gig to each rack, budget providers have a oversubscribed internal network.
– Premium providers guarantee dedicated bandwidth, budget providers have bandwidth restrictions and limitations.
– Premium providers have a more diverse network.
– Premium providers have guaranteed service response times, budget providers do not guarantee response times.
– Premium providers use server grade hardware, budget providers generally use consumer grade hardware.
– Premium providers provide many options standard in the package, including backup solutions, KVM/IP and options to easily add IP space (usually at a charge), Budget providers have restrictions or charge for these options.
– Hardware replacement times are usually faster done in Premium providers, some budget providers do not have onsite staff in evenings and/or weekends.

While the above contains geek, let’s put it into another perspective when it comes to consumer grade vs. commercial grade.

My father and mother in law built their own home almost 30 years ago. They went with commercial grade wood flooring (the type used in libraries and cafeterias) rather than consumer grade flooring.

Five years ago we went with consumer grade wood flooring for our kitchen; we thought we would save money (consumer grade is almost always less money than commercial grade).

Our kitchen floor is now almost completely shot, and my wife’s parents commercial grade flooring will probably out live all of our lives.

The lesson we learned is that had we paid for commercial grade flooring in the first place, we would have saved money because now we need to replace our consumer grade floor.

While my wife and I may live with our shot flooring for a while as we don’t run a business from our kitchen, can your business survive based on events you don’t even know is going on behind your back?

Commodity hosting providers — you have most likely seen them on television ads, magazine ads, and so on — offering hosting for just a few bucks a month have reasons why they set low prices.

Quality hosting generally starts around the price of a movie and drinks for two persons per month; that’s $20.00 to $30.00 per month.

Compared to a few bucks a month that may sound like a rip off or otherwise outrageous pricing.

Yet, it comes down to consumer grade vs. commercial grade. In-house staff including support vs. outsourced support and outsourced call centers.

In the end, you decide what matters most to you, and what you can live with for your organization.

If you want to work with a U.S. based high value hosting provider whose staff are U.S. citizens working in the U.S. whose servers are based in the U.S. with a focus for making sure you get the highest quality hosting daily, contact us.

Some of this companies do so from a referral fee basis, some from a business exchange business (you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch your back), and some as a reseller (this part can be interesting because it is possible to be a reseller of a reseller of a reseller).

Extremely few of them have their own (direct) hosting company.

I would like to encourage you to apply that when your IT, SEO, Web designer / developer tells you to use them for hosting.

Here are some questions you should ask them prior to making your decision:

• Is this your hosting company or are you a reseller?
• If this is your hosting company, does that mean you own the data center?
• (If they answer yes to owning the data center), If I look up ownership of this data center, are you saying you and your firm will be listed as being the principal owner of the data center?
• (If they switch gears stating they are an investor rather than an owner), then if I look up who has stock with the data center company, they will find stock certificates under your name or that of your firm?
• (If they switch gears and state they are a partner with the data center), then if I call them and ask if you and your firm are a certified partner, they will answer yes?
• (If they answered they are a reseller), what level of reseller are they (common answers are alpha, master, reseller, don’t know; alpha has a direct relationship with the provider, master has a direct relationship with the alpha, and reseller has a direct relationship with the master — each level below the alpha typically increases the time to resolve questions and problems)?
• (If they are a reseller) who owns the hosting company (note: If the hosting company is owned by the Endurance International Group (EIG), then expect throttling and limiting of the resources to your account as a matter of course)?; is the hosting company is part of a larger holding company (EIG)?
• What is the service level agreement (SLA) for hosting? If my web site is down for 30 minutes due to a fault with the hosting provider, what then?
• How does the hosting provider deal with overselling?
• Do I contact you or the hosting provider if there are problems with my site? Whom do I contact if I have questions about my site and my hosting?
• If I put in a phone call for help with hosting, what’s the average time before someone starts to help me?
• If I put in a support ticket for help with hosting, what’s the average time before someone starts to help me?
• Where is the hosting provider located?
• How long has the hosting provider been in business?
• How long have you had this relationship with this hosting provider? Did you use other hosting providers? Why did you switch?
• Has the hosting provider had any recent security breeches? If yes, when and where does it stand now?
• What information is available on the security practices the data center has in place?
• If I’m going to do ecommerce, is the data center SSAE 16 Certified?
• Does the hosting provider regularly help customers become PCI Compliant? Where can I find out more about the process?
• Do you have any limits on CPU, RAM, # of processes, inodes, or other resources outside of disk space and bandwidth that my account might use in the course of a given moment of any given day? If you have limits, how are they controlled? Do I get notified when I’m approaching a limit? When I’m at the limit? What happens if I have an application on my site that goes over a limit? What do my visitors see or don’t see?
• May I have the direct contact information for the hosting provider? I would like to call them to flesh out some of your answers (then be sure to do so).
• If I go directly with this hosting provider or another of my choosing, how will that impact our relationship?

Web hosting is day in and day out.

If you are going to do any form of ecommerce whether collecting donations to selling products and services, you should want a hosting provider who will be there for you (the more direct the relationship, typically the greater level of service you will receive).

Resellers are not necessarily a bad deal. Some designers, IT, SEO, etc. firms will pick extremely high quality hosting provider with whom to resell.

If you have experiences with designers, developers, IT, SEO, etc. firms and using their hosting or talking to them about their hosting that you would like to share, please use the comment form below.

Melinda, who hosts the Small Business Chat on twitter every Wednesday night from 8 PM to 9 PM Eastern Time, focuses on helping people become entrepreneurs and for the small businesses they create to grow and succeed.

Whether you have been in business for many years, or are just starting up… did you know that if you properly plan and prepare for your ecommerce store you greatly increase your opportunity to succeed?

If you are nodding your head, do you know how many business managers just leave this decision to their “Web” person or “IT” person?

Over the past 17 years in business, we’ve seen, read, or heard about the above two issues so often, we’ve lost count.

As you take ownership and responsibility of the decision for picking a shopping cart / ecommerce system, I encourage you to ask the following questions:

1. Is the ecommerce system PCI DSS certified (if the answer is no, attaining payment card industry (PCI) compliance runs from impossible to expensive)?
2. When was the last security bug (problem, issue, report, etc.) filed for the system on Secunia’s Vulnerability Database?
3. How many times per year is there a security bug reported over the last 15 years (the more frequently published, the higher degree there are unreported security bugs)?
4. How long has the ecommerce company that created the ecommerce system been in business (unfortunately a lot of business five years old or less fail)?
5. Does the ecommerce shopping cart provider list certified technology partners that can assist you if you run into problems using the system?
6. Is the ecommerce system fully portable should you need to move to a different hosting provider?
7. Will the ecommerce system work on the smallest of shared hosting plans?
8. How well does the shopping cart system scale? How long can you stay in a shared hosting environment to keep your monthly hosting investment to a minimum?

While you do need to trust the people with whom you are working, if you are the steward / manager of the business, the buck stops with you; and, I would encourage you to double check against any bias which may cost you your business.

I would like to share with you why you should consider ShopSite from ShopSite.com as the only ecommerce shopping cart you will need.

ShopSite is VISA PA DSS Certified. Since 1998 (when we started using and offering ShopSite as a ShopSite certified technology partner), any customer of ours using ShopSite who has a PCI Compliance Scan has ShopSite passing with flying colors.

In all of the years ShopSite has been available, they’ve only had one (1) security issue back in 1996. Compared to any other cart, that is outright amazing!!!

ShopSite has been in business for almost two decades. Very few other companies compare.

ShopSite has certified designers and certified technology / hosting partners. Dynamic Net is a certified technology / hosting partner; and we maintain relationships with certified ShopSite designers.

ShopSite is extremely portable especially if you purchase the license vs. renting (it is still portable with renting; but you want to assure that with the hosing provider from whom you rent the software prior to renting it — for us, it is 100% portable).

ShopSite is extremely fast (it is compiled code vs. interpreted PHP, Perl CGI, etc.); and ShopSite scales extremely well in a shared hosting environment.

ShopSite ecommerce stores have handled massive floods of traffic when the business is featured on national media in a shared hosting environment.

ShopSite is relatively web server agnostic; you don’t have to worry about a down ecommerce store because your hosting provider updated the operating system, the web server software, or the database software.

Please contact us if you have questions as to why ShopSite would be the only ecommerce system / shopping cart software your small to medium business will ever need.

Please share your thoughts and questions about this article below in the comment area.

I’ve found you stay in touch by being in touch.

The most recent topic of discussion in the Linked To Lancaster LinkedIn group was the need for every single organization to have a web site — especially if your organization is a small business.

Kenton’s statement makes a lot of sense.

Web site design is very visual. Designers can white board, story board, and show you successful sites they have created in the past.

What can a web hosting company show you, visually, that they are unique as well as the being the company for you?

The Kennebunk Inn in Maine, US came to mind. Brian and Shanna O’Hea came to us in the year 2005 when they needed a managed hosting provider who would help keep their site secure; and walk them through the ecommerce dance.

Brian and Shanna are passionate about cooking, about food, and about their inn.

Like most small businesses, they don’t have the time to make sure their web site is online yet alone worry about the what if… what if their work is featured on a major network? Would their web site be crushed? Would they be pressured to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server from their economical shared hosting plan?

Who has time for those worries?

Back to cooking and great food. Did you know Brian and Shanna have “THE BEST” Maine Lobster Pie?

Iron Chef Cat Cora put her reputation on the mark when she picked the Maine Lobster Pie from The Kennebunk Inn in Maine. Brian and Shanna’s work was featured on The Food Network, The Best Thing I’ve Ever Ate.

All of our infrastructure was completely green while The Kennebunk Inn’s sales of Maine Lobster Pie skyrocketed from being featured on the show.

Brian and Shanna didn’t have to worry about being throttled or otherwise being put into a bad spot due to being featured on a major TV network.

When Shanna O’Hea was one of the competing chefs on The Food Network show, Chopped, she didn’t have to spend a moment worrying if her and her husband’s web site was up and running.

Shanna spent her time on Chopped cooking with passion!

Just like when Brian and Shanna’s Maine Lobster Pie was featured, being on a major TV network with increased site traffic still had the servers and environment with green lights on.

Each and every one of our customers matter to us. We compete on core values we believe strongly benefit our business customers.

If you are not 100% happy with your web site hosting provider, contact us to discuss how we can be your servant and provide you with reliable and secure hosting.

What does it really mean when a data center provider states they offer managed servers?

Most of the time, especially when the statement is coming from a company that owns multiple data centers, “managed servers” means the servers are managed when you ask for management within the limits of their terms of service.

Business owners and managers may be in for a rude awakening when they find out their server or sites on their server have been hacked; then when they ask their provider about it, find out that hardening the server was not included, or they only did an initial server hardening but no follow up to keep the server hardened.

Server management falls into two categories: proactive and reactive.

If you want peace of mind for your hosting experience, you want proactive management.

If you are not sure what your proactively manages or does not manage, ask them.

Ask them what they proactively do at what frequency through what period of time. Get specific with questions such as when is a server hardened? How often are operating system updates checked and applied? How often are logs reviewed? What are your procedures for notifying me if I have a near full hard drive partition? If you notice one of my sites being aggressively attacked? If you see an error from one of my sites in an error log? … and so on.

Dynamic Net, Inc. is a full managed hosting provider of proactive managed dedicated servers, proactive managed vps servers, proactive managed shared hosting, and proactive managed reseller hosting.

Contact us if you have questions on our proactive managed hosting services.

The hard part when it comes to choosing a hosting provider when you have approximately 32,000 hosting providers in the United States alone tied to various groups saying, I’m using so and so for web hosting is commonly falling into the lull of not reading the fine print, not taking the time to do one’s homework.

You might be a member of the LinkedIn WordPress group or a similar business or hobby group; and ten or more people share to go with so and so provider; they’ve been with them for x period of time, and they are happy.

You check out so and so providers site, it looks clean, and they advertise so much disk space and bandwidth… wow, you are really going to get your money’s worth… so you think.

Your site starts off small, and everything appears to be working well. You might even join the band wagon sharing with others, use my host; look at all I’m getting for just $ per month.

Now for some house keeping… almost all businesses fall into one of two categories for how they choose to compete against others in their field of business.

The majority of the hosting providers in the world compete on price. And that way of competing involves a number of dirty little secrets.

One of the dirty little secrets you may never run into if your site stays small — small in traffic usage, small in CPU usage, small in disk usage, and so on.

If your site does grow, you may find yourself in a bind with the provider for whom you thought you were getting so much value for the dollar just looking at all of the resources they advertise for such a cheap price.

Yet, as your site grows you are most likely going to face problems you would not have thought about in advance.

inode limit – WOW, I thought I had so much available disk space.

Cheap hosting providers, to keep their costs low, will place limits on the number of inodes they allow per hosting plan.

Value hosting providers such as Dynamic Net, Inc. provide unlimited inodes.

CPU limit, RAM limit, process limit — what happened to my online store? Why are my online sales down?

On March 7, 2012 there was a post in web hosting discussion forum about a popular, cheap hosting provider titled, Issues with ____________ Throttling? (hosting provider name removed to respect their privacy).

Cheap hosting providers, to keep their costs low, will use either home grown operating systems and tools or operating systems like CloudLinux to severely limit the amount of CPU, RAM, and processes available to a site.

Value providers such as Dynamic Net, who do use CloudLinux, will have limits high enough to allow any normal site usage including being on the home shopping club and various TV shows like QVC; and what limits are in place are high enough ceilings to catch only misuse.

If you were hunting for physical office space, a home, an apartment, etc. you would want to see the place, look at the neighborhood, check out the surrounding businesses. You would carefully review any lease or rental agreement. You would leave very little (if anything) to chance.

Why not take a more serious, proactive approach to your hosting needs?

While you may not be in a position to visit a facility or the office of the provider (not all providers own the data center where the equipment is located), you could call or email; and dig deep with questions that go beyond what’s advertised as being a part of a particular hosting plan.

The bottom line is will the hosting provider allow you to grow your business easily without ever holding you hostage? Will they be there for you over the years whether your business is growing, or sad to say down sizing?

Contact us if you have any questions about our managed hosting services. We compete on value because we know you and others like you matter far more as human beings than wanting to be the cheapest or among the cheapest provider around.

My grandmother died when I was in my thirties. Well over twenty years of hearing her state she was going to die soon numbed me to the reality that she would die when Jesus called her until the reality hit, she died.

Those of us who work with IP addresses daily have heard about IPv4 addresses running out for well over a decade. You soon start to think, the IPv4 shortage isn’t as bad as it is made out to be… until reality hits.

Before I write anything further, since most of you don’t work day to day with IPv4 addresses, let me go over some things.

Last February, ARIN announced that IANA has handed out their last /8’s (16 million) of IPv4 addresses.

When that happened, stricter rules went into effect for those doing business with ARIN.

ARIN now requires parties asking for additional IPv4 addresses to prove they, and their customers, are efficiently using at least 80% of their existing IP address.

In the past, Data centers and ISP’s would order a projected years worth of new IP address at a time. Since February of last year, they are only able to order a three month supply.

Each time they ask for more IP addresses, they have to bring with them a stack of paperwork showing that previous allocations are being efficiently used; audits are involved. Larger data centers and ISP’s are being forced to hire additional staff just to deal with the paperwork and audit requirements.

What counts as efficient use of a dedicated IP address does vary, but more and more the variance is tightening as the world gets closer to having no more unused IPv4 addresses.

Currently, the largest data centers and ISP’s consider the only valid use of a dedicated IP address in a web hosting environment to be for a digital ID also known as a secure certificate.

Some providers, like Rackspace.com, actually require customers to have an active (non expired) secure certificate on hand for them to release a dedicated IP address to the customer. Other providers, like SoftLayer.com, will take the time to do an audit with you to see if there’s any way to make use of previously acquired IPv4 addresses.

Does does this impact hosting providers?

Typically, the hosting provider does not have their own data center; they rely on co-location or renting servers from data centers and ISP’s. The hosting provider receives the IP addresses they need for their customers from the same place they have their servers (some who co-locate have large enough IP address banks that they can deal directly with ARIN).

More and more when a hosting provider now goes to their data center / ISP for new IP addresses, just as the data center / ISP has to go through an audit to prove efficient use of IP addresses, so does the hosting provider.

What about the owner of a hosting site? How does the IP shortage impact the average consumer of hosting?

Prior to the growing IP crunch, it was ok for any site to have a dedicated IP address for whatever reason. Some of the reasons used in the past are as follows (along with a “–” note as to why those reasons are no longer valid):

The average site owner should not be impacted for some time. Hosting consumers who currently have a dedicated IP address they are not using efficiently, may — when push comes to shove — be asked to give up the IP address for someone who does have a valid use for one.

What can you do now to help with the shortage of IPv4 addresses?

Check if you are on a shared IP address or if you are using a dedicated IP address; you can ask your hosting provider if you are not sure where to look for this information.

If you are on a shared IP, congratulations; you are helping to conserve IP addresses.

If you are on a dedicated IP address, then review how you are using it. Do you have a secure certificate (digital ID) for https for your site? Is it current or did it expire? If the secure certificate is current, congratulations as you are making proper use of your dedicated IP address. If not, then think about either renewing the secured certificate or giving back the dedicated IP address to be used by someone who really needs it.

Contact us if you have any questions.

Resources:

https://www.arin.net/resources/request/ipv4_depletion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_address_exhaustion
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/02/07/03/1352239/craig-silverstein-answers-your-google-questions – 5) Google and IP address
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/myth-busting-virtual-hosts-vs-dedicated-ip-addresses/