Why Dynamic IPs?

rogue-entity

Something that struck me as rather curious over the last few days..
Why do DSL ISP's insist on their customers having dynamic IPs, why not just give every customer the option of having a fixed IP?

BT will only give a static IP to business customers, and wont even let home users onto their business packages, dispite said packages being unlimited making them ideal for heavy users.
BT also force the IP to change every 24 hours by resetting your PPPoE session.

DigiWeb will give a static IP to all business customers, and all customers on the DSL Extra and higher packages. Dynamic to everyone else, but they dont force a reset like BT does.

So what is the big issue?
Are they doing it for "security through obscurity", or are they trying to discourage home hosting?

Cabaal

Its cheaper at the end of the day, home users don't really need static IP's and if you do then be prepared to pay for it.

Using dynamic IP's will make it harder for the less techie people out their to do home hosting but then home hosting is against the Terms & Conditions of basically all home ISP's., of courses services like logmein.com, dyndns etc will work perfectly with dynamic IP's so its not really a big deal.

BT will allow home users onto their business packages I should know I was on one of them, however it involved giving them about a 300e deposit but it was a cracking service at the time compared to the residential services

marchanlon

Just for clarities sake, IP addresses have not and never will cost money for the ISPs. The organisations responsible for their allocation do not charge for the commodity itself, they charge for the administrative cost of allocating IP addresses.

The technical reason for dynamic IPs is that IPv4 addresses are running out, partially due to the way they were allocated in the first place (there are large numbers of IP addresses that cannot be used now because they were wrongly allocated to an organisation earlier). Dynamic IPs encourage better use of the remaining blocks by reducing the number of IPs that each ISP needs, as its based on actual users online at any given point rather than total number of subscribers.

Cabaal

Well it costs less money in many different respects, think support calls etc..people complaining about games servers black listing their IP or security concerns

lynchie

rogue-entity wrote: »

Something that struck me as rather curious over the last few days..
Why do DSL ISP's insist on their customers having dynamic IPs, why not just give every customer the option of having a fixed IP?

BT will only give a static IP to business customers, and wont even let home users onto their business packages, dispite said packages being unlimited making them ideal for heavy users.
BT also force the IP to change every 24 hours by resetting your PPPoE session.

DigiWeb will give a static IP to all business customers, and all customers on the DSL Extra and higher packages. Dynamic to everyone else, but they dont force a reset like BT does.

So what is the big issue?
Are they doing it for "security through obscurity", or are they trying to discourage home hosting?

Its easier from an admin point of view to use dhcp to administer ip addresses rather than doing it individually. I know from administering a private apn on a hsdpa network that to assign an ip address to a client you have to add several entries to your radius database to tie the mobile number to the ip address you want to use. To use dhcp, you set one global option in radius and forget about it.

rogue-entity

@Cabaal: I tried to switch to BT's business service, it would have given me what I wanted, a static IP, and none of the crap with resetting my connection every 24 hours. They told me flat out that it was not an option unless I was a registered business. When their cancellations guy called me I pointed this out, and he said there was nothing he could do about it. So I voted with my wallet and moved over to Digiweb. Problem solved.

And and even with all the points mentioned.. what is there to stop an ISP from issuing a customer a static IP on request.. IIRC, GAA Telecom and Imagine give static IPs by default.

crawler

There is also the point that there is a general shortage of IPv4 addresses and RIPE insist on the efficient use of IPv4 address space.

Dynamic addressing is more efficient in terms of usage than static as it i based on average usage over a larger pool.

May be different with IPv6 but we will wait and see.

Cabaal

rogue-entity wrote: »

@Cabaal: I tried to switch to BT's business service, it would have given me what I wanted, a static IP, and none of the crap with resetting my connection every 24 hours. They told me flat out that it was not an option unless I was a registered business. When their cancellations guy called me I pointed this out, and he said there was nothing he could do about it. So I voted with my wallet and moved over to Digiweb. Problem solved.

And and even with all the points mentioned.. what is there to stop an ISP from issuing a customer a static IP on request.. IIRC, GAA Telecom and Imagine give static IPs by default.

Seems to be conflicting info regarding this depending on what agent you speak to within BT Business, why not just register a business name and you'll be sorted?

Also you know UTV offer static IP's don't you?

The way I see it there really is no reason for an ISP to give a static IP, if you need it for hosting stuff then your actually breaking their T&C's and if you need it for some business related activity then get a business package...simple as.

kaiser sauze

Ice Broadband supply a static IP as standard.

However, ahem, based on the other stickied thread, I'd be loathe to recommend them.

I'm having no issues, though.

Anti

Why anyone would want a static ip address for home use is beyond me. Its just asking for trouble.