Static IP address

No. A public address can be static or dynamic, and a private one can be static too. Private addresses come from three ranges set aside in February 1996 for use inside networks: 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16. Nobody on the internet sees them.

Fixing a private address is something you do yourself, on the device or as a reservation in the router. The DHCP standard of March 1997 calls this "manual allocation". A static public address has to come from the provider. Router makers say as much: eero's help pages note that external addresses "are usually dynamic" and send customers to the provider for the details.

Anyone other people must find at the same address. A mail server is the classic case: Spamhaus says one "needs to be on a static IP" with matching forward and reverse DNS. Remote access into an office, links between two company networks, and suppliers that let you in only from a listed address all work the same way.

It does not make a connection faster. A provider that sells static addresses says so on its own blog: a static IP "does not automatically make an internet connection faster, more reliable or more secure". Its value is that other systems know where to find you.

Since 2025 one group of people needs a static IP by rule. SEBI, India's market regulator, told brokers in February 2025 to stop open APIs and allow access only "through a unique vendor client specific API key and static IP whitelisted by the broker". After two extensions, the rule has applied to all stock brokers since 1 April 2026.

The National Stock Exchange set out the details in May 2025. A client registers one static address, with an optional second one for redundancy, and may change them at most once a calendar week. "A static IP can only be mapped to one client at a time", with an exception for members of one family.

Whatever supplies the address, the rule wants it fixed and used by you alone. A rotating proxy or a shared exit cannot meet that; a dedicated fixed address can. Ask your broker which addresses it accepts before you register one.

Ask your internet provider first. Where it exists, it is usually an add-on: Viasat, for example, sells static IPs on its business plans. Some providers do not offer one at all. Starlink's help pages say that "truly static IPs are not available", though its Priority plans can hold a public address through reboots.

If the address only has to be fixed for traffic you send out, a server or a proxy can supply it. A dedicated proxy gives you one address that nobody else uses, and every request you send through it leaves from that address. It cannot receive connections for a server at home, which still needs the provider's static address or a relay.

Fixed addresses came first. BOOTP, from September 1985, kept a table that matched each machine to its own IP address. Dial-up links from 1992 and DHCP's leases made changing addresses normal, and DHCP kept the fixed address as an option.

For homes, dynamic became the default and static became something a provider sells separately. IPv6 has the same split under other names: a RIPE guide of October 2017 asks providers to give customers persistent prefixes by default.