You're on CGNAT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv4_shared_address_space

Thanks for that .. makes a lot of sense but it's very different to how the IPs were allocated when first set up.
CGNAT would appear to be quite common then so I guess it's not the reason for the continual Cloudflare checks and redirects and a router restart didn't change anything.

My understanding was that People's Fibre was CGNAT by default unless you paid for a static IP. It's possible that you had a static IP without paying for it, and that config has now reverted to CGNAT. Or you are paying but the configuration has broken.

Seeing CAPTCHAs etc. is not unusual for CGNAT connections. You *should* also have IPv6 available to you which should go a long way to alleviating the problem as long as the sites you're accessing are using it.

I don't believe a static IP is something People's Fibre offered, although I guess it's possible that they've had to move to CGNAT at some point as their customer base increased and they started to have financial problems that seems to have led to them being taken over by Swish.

No IPv6 configured on my connection.

The Cloudflare stuff has disappeared as of this morning and neither my CGNAT or public IP addresses have changed.

Intresting news https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/12/troubl...

They did, at least they did before they went into administration:

https://peoplesfibre.co.uk/terms-and-conditions

4.14 IP Address. People’s Fibre supplies the use of IP addresses to its customers and People’s Fibre owns these IP addresses. Home and Business Broadband Services uses Carrier Grade NAT (CGN) (RFC6598) but can if needed get a public ipv4 through DHCP (for a monthly charge). Business Broadband Services can also order static IPv4 addresses separately. Price for static IPv4 address can be found in the price sheet. We reserve the right to recall our IP addresses after the term of the Agreement has finished. We will give 90 days notice to the customer in this instance.

https://peoplesfibre.co.uk/priceguide

Public IPV4 Address

Due to the shortage of IPv4 addresses, we use Carrier Grade Nat (CGN) which allows for more efficient use of our IPv4 address range. This means that each time you access an IPv4 website, our network seamlessly allocates you a dynamic, rather than static, IP address from our pool of public addresses, with no disruption to service. This has no impact on the security of your connection – it’s simply about how we manage the allocation of our available IP addresses.

There are, however, some applications that may be affected by this. These include applications such as online gaming, VPNs, P2P applications and hosting at homes. If you do notice any issues and would like to transfer to a public IPv4 via DHCP for £5 a month, please contact our Customer Service team who will be happy to assist.

Edit: I see the references to the IP on the home service are about a public address rather than static. At least in the case of my colleague he was under the impression it was static, and it's not changed since it was allocated.

Edited by jpm (Wed 29-Dec-21 17:10:52)

Interesting about the level of take-up PF had seen in that article. It's been rock solid ever since I've had it but at that level of custom and offering 900mbit services for £30/month I guess someone has got their sums very wrong at the basic supply/demand forecast level.

I got connected in the summer, and as soon as it had been installed, I started to get folks knocking on my door asking how it was. There's only so many times you can go through the story before it gets tiresome so I pushed a plant pot infront of the little brown cover on the front of my house and the queries promptly dried up.

I guess the altnet provider space is rife for consolidation in the same way ISPs were in the noughties? Possibly up-to and including being bought out by much bigger telcos who will inherit nice new fibre networks?

The network only being available to subscribe to for ~6 months probably explains the low take-up, especially when a lot of the consumer contracts are 18-24 months long, and very few people would terminate a contract early to move to FTTP, or pay for two services for a year.

With another six months to a year of cashflow they would probably have made it.

In reply to a post by jpm:

With another six months to a year of cashflow they would probably have made it.

I'm not so sure about that.

Even taking the above in to consideration (people in contracts etc), 150 active subscribers from over 5000 properties passed is shockingly low.
That's under 3% take up

One thing I will say on this is that their marketing was quite intensive for a period early in 2021. Lots of ads on websites and lots of injecting their presence into social media.

But - the problem with that is whilst you might see the ads, and whilst you might be on their roadmap, the granularity of ads like this isn't sufficient to target only people who can get the services you can provide. I saw the ads a number of times and couldn't then subscribe and perhaps a lot of people lost interest.

PF and Gigaclear are (were) fighting over the same turf in the Braintree area. PF undercut Gigaclear and got my vote (I still can't get Gigaclear ~6 months later). But I still had until the end of 2021 on Plusnet to fall back should PF have been miserable. As noted above, not a single issue.

I'll assume that the costs PF incurred in building out their network in Braintree were significant. But I'll assume their built network is an asset in any sale.

It's an interesting scenario and something I suspect a lot of the new 'alt net' fibre providers will experience. I note another thread elsewhere on this forum suggesting not a lot of folks want FTTP. My major reason for moving was to stop paying for the traditional line rental that services reliant on Openreach can't detach themselves from.