All devices on the Internet are recognized by a unique number called an IP address, such as 123.123.123.123. In case you have a site, the domain name that you enter to be able to load it is to save you time, yet the server where your website files are still has an IP address. As there're far more sites and devices than there're IPs, all the shared web hosting servers have a number of websites under an identical IP, whereas using a dedicated server you will have a dedicated IP too. Even in the first case though, you will be able to get a dedicated IP for your websites and host them on a shared server. One benefit would be that you may enjoy better search engine rankings because a dedicated IP generally means a faster loading website. In addition, you need such an IP when you would like to acquire an SSL certificate for your site and protect the data that visitors submit on it.