All devices on the World Wide Web are recognized by a unique number called an IP address, for example 123.123.123.123. In case you have a site, the domain name that you enter in order to access it is to save you time, however the server where the website files are still has an IP address. Due to the fact that there are far more websites and devices than there are IP addresses, all shared web hosting servers have a number of sites under the very same IP, whereas using a dedicated server you'll have a dedicated IP too. Even in the first case though, you'll be able to get a dedicated IP for your websites and host them on a shared server. One advantage would be that you will get better search engine rankings because a dedicated IP generally means a faster loading website. What is more, you need such an IP if you want to acquire an SSL certificate for your site and protect the data that your visitors submit on it.