Reserved IPs Glossary

DigitalOcean Reserved IP addresses are a publicly-accessible static IP addresses. Assign and reassign reserved IP addresses to Droplets as needed, or implement a failover mechanism with reserved IPs to build a high availability infrastructure.

This glossary defines the core concepts behind reserved IPs to help build your mental model of how reserved IPs work and understand what the documentation is referring to when it uses certain terminology.

Anchor IP

Anchor IP addresses are IP addresses that reserved IPs can bind to.

Failover

Failover is a high availability (HA) mechanism that monitors servers for failures and reroutes traffic or operations to a redundant server when the primary server fails.

Gateway

A gateway is a server or router that provides access to networks from other networks or the public internet.

High Availability

High Availability (HA) is an approach to infrastructure design focusing on reducing downtime and eliminating single points of failure.

IPv4

IPv4, or Internet Protocol version 4, is a networking protocol that maps 32-bit IP addresses to devices on a network. IPv4 routes most of the network traffic on the internet.