What is the advantage of having more than one static IP?

Hi, I'm about to sign with a new internet service provider but i see that one of the packages come with one static IP, and the other package comes with up to eight static IP's. Can someone please tell me the advantages of having more than one static IP, because I've looked everywhere for an answer and cant seem to find one, any help would be appreciated, Thanks

For practical purposes a home user on needs one IP address, your router (Linksys/ other) will be on a private IP address something in the 192.168.x range, most often it is either 192.168.1.0 subnet. The router utilizes a protocol known as NAT or Network Address Translation so that all of your home systems appear to be on the same physical IP address. Few people really have the need for a static IP address, DHCP works just as well unless you are running a server (WEB server, ftp server etc..)

Multiple IP addresses would allow you to attach, in your case, 8 different computers each having it's own Internet address. However for security purposes you should have a router in front of each computer to keep the hackers out.

You only need one, if having a static is free. Which ever machine you hook up with the static IP make sure it has a firewall. I use one static ip on my (linux)server, that is the firewall and it has a dhcp server which then shares the internet connection to all of the computers I have, giving them all internal IP address's.

Even if you have more than one server, you still only really need on static ip then program your firewall to redirect to any servers you have.

The argument that a large network needs more static IPs than a small one is proposterous. Your ISP only assigns PUBLIC ip addresses to your router; NOT internal private ip address (to each computer). You don't need a static ip address from your ISP for your internal computers. You only need one if you have a computer/server that needs to be able to accept connections from the Internet.

There are a few reasons to have more than one static IP but mostly if you are running multiple websites, servers, etc THAT NEED TO BE ADDRESSED FROM THE INTERNET (not internally) will need their own IP addresses. If you don't run your own website from your own server or you don't run any servers at all, then you can use your one static IP to connect to your home computer from any Internet Connection (with Remote Desktop Connection or other connection software; free and included with XP). You will need to port forward your router to the internal IP address of the server/computer that you want addressed but this is usually easily done with some reading about setting up port forwarding on your router.

If the static ip is free then take it, you can always use it to connect to your computer while you are away. If not, then don't buy it unless you have plans for it later.

if you have a small network, ONE static ip will be fine. if you have a BIG network (up to 100computers or more) then you will need more than one static IP.

A static IP address is a number (in the form of a dotted quad) that is assigned to a computer by an Internet service provider (ISP) to be its permanent address on the Internet. Computers use IP addresses to locate and talk to each other on the Internet, much the same way people use phone numbers to locate and talk to one another on the telephone. When you want to visit whatis.com, your computer asks a domain name system (DNS) server (think telephone information operator) for the correct dotted quad number (think phone number) for whatis.com and your computer uses the answer it receives to connect to the whatis.com server.

for a home user, ONE static ip is fine

furthermore, if you want to save money, go with the dynamic ip package (standard), and sign up for a free DNS host name , this updates your IP with the HOST NAME and allows you to assign a NAME to your IP so you wont forget the ip b/c a dynamic ip changes often.

For most users, I am not sure there is one. Unless you need a static IP address due to some software being used. There used to be software that couldn't handle nat'd ip addresses. I am not sure that is a problem now though.

If your running different servers you may need a few different static IP addresses especially if they use the same ports.

On a larger network.. you may have more then 1 server which serves up your webpage OR which acts as an Internet Gateway / VPN / Firewall to handle the load.

So basically, there are mutliple services which benefit from a Static IP... large corporations need multiple Static IPs to balance the load on 1 server.