If your IP address is suspended, you need to understand why it has happened, what your rights are and how you can resolve it.

How do I know if my IP address been suspended?

• Can you access your website?
• Can the IP it points to be reached?
• Have your domain email or domain related services stopped working?
• Has everything just stopped working?

If any or all of these are true, and you haven’t received an email already, check your inbox and any spam filters or junk folders for notices of complaints from your webhosting provider. Chances are, your IP address has been suspended.

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Why has my provider suspended my IP?

The simple answer is that your hosting provider has chosen to suspend your IP address because it believes that there is a problem with the IP.

A hosting provider is jointly liable for resolving complaints made against content on their network, whether you have a dedicated server or are working in the public cloud. Your terms and conditions with your provider will include an indemnity clause that states that you will have to cover any legal costs they incur as a result of your actions on their network.

Naturally, most providers will want to avoid a legal dispute. So, if they receive complaints about your content or services on the IP, they may decide to stop access to the IP address to prevent legal action being taken.

What might cause a complaint against my IP?

Issues that might lead to a complaint against your IP include:

• The server hosting the IP has been hacked or compromised, and thus is now transmitting or receiving malicious traffic. It could be being used to send out spam, or as a ‘bot’ in a DDoS attack, or to store trojans or viruses.
• The server hosting the IP contains content such as media or data that is being disputed as a result of a copyright infringement claim.
• The server hosting the IP contains material that is illegal to store, or be accessed in the country it is hosted in.
• The server hosting the IP has been security scanned and contains a virus that may spread to other areas of the network.
• The server hosting the IP runs services that are illegal in some territories (e.g. gambling) and it is not restricting access to those territories.

What will happen and what should I do?

Your hosting provider should alert you to any complaint that has been raised, and give you a reasonable time to respond – unless of course there is a serious threat from the service remaining live.

You should have time to investigate the situation.  It could be that one of your end-users has uploaded a file they shouldn’t have, and that the file can taken down and then the user informed or banned. In cases where you’ve been hacked, you’ll need to patch your server’s vulnerabilities so that they can no longer be exploited.

Whatever the reason for the suspension, your provider should be able to assist you and help restore your services. The key point of resolution is communication – keeping dialogue open between you and your provider will support you in getting your IP address back up and running as quickly as possible.