Redirects

I am switching shopping carts to OpenCart and also changing hosts. I want to make sure that redirects are correctly configured. If I am just changing hosts and the domain will remain the same and just point to a new IP address, do I still need to create a sitewide 301 redirect? Do I create the redirect on my old host or do I need to change the htaccess file on my new host?

Well, this does not need any redirects, you just have to set your Server Path
accordingly in both of the OC config.php files, to have them linked correctly
the internal way, since your external Links will stay the same, as you mentioned.
Ernie