ISP wants €250 to tell me my IP address

sluice44

Hah, made you look!!

I've opened a small depot in a NI Enterprise Agency park and we got broadband installed. The Enterprise Agency has sub-contracted the broadband management to a third party IT company.

This IT company have hidden our computers/router behind 'their' firewall and they've given me an 'internal' IP address. I've installed an internet camera because the stock is valuable and the depot is not manned full-time. The camera works fine within the NI office but the IT company won't tell me what my 'external' IP address is.

They've no problem with the Internet camera but they want approx €250 to set up a VPN for me. I don't want VPN; just my 'real' IP address.

Two questions:
1. Is this fair?
2. Is there a 'half-way house' between the current situation and a VPN (that's free)?

Chalk

try www.whatismyip.com

that will give you the external ip.

youll then need access thru the it companies firewall,
youll need the password for it and then set up access thru it for whatever port your camera uses

Capt'n Midnight

Might as well wander over to http://www.grc.com to check ports too

_Kaiser_

Sounds a bit strange to me that this 3rd party company is being paid to provide your own company/office with a service, but then want extra to tell you what exactly they've done/how they've done it?

sluice44

Thanks for the quick replies.

To give a bit more info, I've on a shared connection (think IDA providing broadband in their industrial estates) that's managed by a 3rd party (the IDA are not computer experts). I'm just one of hundred 'IDA' networked computers that needs to be 'supervised' so I don't destroy their network with viruses etc.

I know what my internal & external IP addresses are but I'm annoyed that 'they' won't let me do what I want. 'Their' firewall is blocking access to the various ports I need.

I'm not a computer expert but I think €250 is expensive to get the IT company to open ports a,b,c on (my) 123.456.78.9.

optiplexgx270

Tell them to open them for you or you'll pull the service (if thats an option)

Nietzschean

well what the seem to be offering you is a vpn which wouldn't be the same lark as opening the ports at all. It seems that this management company only have possibly a handfull of ip's for all the computers in the estate. so you per say don't have your own internet ip address, your sharing in effect. , Some Solutions to this :
if you have BB somewhere else with a constant internet connection u can have ur machine in the estate connect out to it and form the vpn urself.
or possibly setting up an IPv6 tunnel for your machine internally, would give it an external ipv6 address, though u might need a tunnel on your other end points to get at it depending on the situation....


and is the 250 a 1 off fee or a re-occuring one? i'd complain to the IDA , BB provided via nat'n like this sounds very cheapish

Snaga

Well if I had a camera watching stock I certainly wouldnt want it freely accessibly from the internet, even with a generic web username/password combination it would only be a matter of time before someone else is viewing your stock room.

The vpn will at least protect you from other external sources trying to get access to your camera.

250 sounds a little high (I would imagine its a one off setup fee), but the added security of a vpn should not be overlooked in this case.