Hi Jonathan,

For SSL we'll be writing up an article that will allow users to use a single public IP and multiple backend private IPs to be able to run multiple SSL sites via a reverse proxy through nginx to an Apache SSL backend.

That way you won't need to use multiple IPs for hosting as many SSL enabled sites as you like.

Multiple IP's would be nice in cases where more than one website is hosted on a single droplet. For instance, we have a number of clients that reside on servers/networks outside of DO. A handful of them require SSL for their websites/domains though don't need their own VPS (they just need a site that works, they don't want to manage a server). In the case of only allowing one IP per VPS, if we were to move them over, we'd need 1x VPS per 1x Client which would be overkill simply based on their collective needs.

Given that example (a real-life example, btw), it'd be nice to see 1 IP on the 256/512MB and the option to add an at least 2-4 IP's on the 1GB+ VPS's. On the larger VPS's that boast 4-8GB+ RAM (and beyond), it'd be nice to see even a limit of up to 10 IP's. I don't care to pay for the IP's, I don't expect them for free, though I would need them.


Just my 2c :-).

Cool. I learned something new today. Want to use Digital Ocean but I did not want to wait for additional IPs or the write up on Nginx.

So there is this cool things called SNI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication

Most modern browsers send the host name along with the ssl request. If you have a modern browser and a modern web server you are good.

It makes sense for us because we do not develop websites for older browsers. My only concern in the list of unsupported browsers is old Android Phone (before 3.0).

We use Lighttpd as a webserver. Using the configs in the URL below got us up and running.

http://tech.sybreon.com/2010/07/15/lighttpd-server-name-indication-sni/

So I guess in general I learned needing more than one IP for Https is almost a concept of the past. Unless you are still supporting really old versions of IE.

Just thought I would share.

If we had an infinite pool of IPv4 addresses it wouldn't be an issue and we could certainly provision more for each customer, but that was also the point behind HTTP supporting multiple domains on a single IP because it became obvious quickly that a single IP just to separate a domain wasn't a great approach.

There's also a common misconception that sharing an IP for multiple domains lowers your SEO score which isn't true unless you are actively trying to game SEO by creating multiple sites that have similar content and are cross linking to each other, so the gains there are minimal and at worst are actually a detriment to overall SEO ranks because large search engines like Google are constantly refining their methods for screening for SEO gaming tricks.

So really we are back to where we started which is we love to hear from customers about their needs for more public IP addresses and see if we can find a solution which will take care of their issue.

We just published an article about how to setup multiple SSL sites on a single IP using nginx and that is supported by the majority of the latest browsers so that's one big issue that's now resolved.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-multiple-ssl-certificates-on-one-ip-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-12-04

If there are other specific instances please let us know!

Thanks

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for writing in!

Unfortunately this is has absolutely nothing to do with us trying to sell more droplets and everything to do with limited IPv4 IP space.

APNIC is completely out of IPv4 space, RIPE ran out earlier this year, and ARIN will be out within the next 6-12 months. Latin America will be out of IP space in about 12 months.

Internet standards have been modified over time to avoid the necessity of having a single IP per service and that led to allowing multiple virtualhosts on a single IP and now almost every modern browser even supports multiple SSL certs on a single IP.

With any commodity where there is a limited supply when the supply runs out this creates a market for that commodity. While we do pay fees to the governing bodies for any IPs that we are allocated these fees pale in comparison to the amount that we must spend to purchase IPs from other providers.

In our Amsterdam region our last two allocations have been purchased and each allocation has cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars. And unfortunately this price will only increase over time as the resource becomes more scarce.

There is effectively only one solution to this global dilemma and it is the global adoption of IPv6 however that requires everything along the network path to be upgraded and capable of fully supporting IPv6. This is a huge change and while IPv6 has been around for quite some time global adoption is in the sub 5% region. The good news is that once ARIN runs and out Latin America runs out I think the timeline for everyone updating their equipment and so forth will be expedited so we should see an exponential adoption curve of IPv6 at that point.

Welcome any replies or comments that you may have.

Thanks!

Hi,

We currently don't support multiple IP addresses for the same droplet, but if you give us some more info on what you're looking to setup we may be able to recommend a solution where we can work around the restriction of 1 IP per droplet.

Thanks

Out of curiosity, what about those that would prefer to not run dual web servers? We use NGINX + Varnish & Litespeed exclusively and would prefer not to have to run Apache along side. On the Litespeed servers, we're using CPanel as clients have expressed a need for a control panel to ease day-to-day management. In such a case, Apache is disabled completely and Litespeed handles SSL & Non-SSL. We switched to LS & NGINX to avoid having to use Apache where possible :-). Having to run Apache along side NGINX or Litespeed to handle SSL isn't an ideal solution.

I know managing IP's can be a headache, with the requirement of validation of use, though IP's are essential to quite a few setups and for those using CPanel, or any CP really, private IP's are not always handled correctly. While this is primarily due to software, there have been cases where it just doesn't work.