These sit near each other on quotes and get conflated. They solve very different problems at very different levels of complexity.
Static IPs
A static IP is an address that does not change. Most business circuits include a small block. You need one if you host anything reachable from outside — a mail server, a VPN endpoint, a camera system, a payment terminal that a processor whitelists.
The practical reason to care: allow-lists. If a partner, bank or vendor restricts access to known addresses, a changing IP breaks that relationship at unpredictable moments. Static IPs are inexpensive and worth having if any of that applies.
BGP
BGP is the routing protocol the internet uses to decide how traffic reaches you. Running it yourself means you announce your own address space and can be reached over multiple carriers simultaneously — if one carrier fails, the internet re-routes to you through another, without your address changing.
That is genuine carrier-grade redundancy. It is also a commitment:
- You need your own IP allocation and an AS number from a regional registry.
- You need at least two transit providers for it to mean anything.
- You need people who can configure and troubleshoot routing, because a misconfiguration is visible to the whole internet.
Which do you need?
Static IPs: probably, if you host or get allow-listed. Cheap, simple, ask for them.
BGP: only if you are a service provider, run infrastructure that genuinely cannot go offline, or already employ network engineers. For everyone else, SD-WAN across two circuits delivers the resilience you actually wanted with a fraction of the complexity.
The question that settles it
Does your business have someone whose job title includes "network"? If not, you want SD-WAN, not BGP — and that is not a compromise, it is the correct engineering choice for your situation.
